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The Minister for Local Government and Homelessness (Alison McGovern)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the legacy of Jo Cox.
It is an honour to move this debate on behalf of the Government. I thank Jo’s family for being with us yesterday in Downing Street, and for their incredible leadership and friendship. Throughout the past decade they have all been an inspiration. Their tenacity and guts have given us all strength, and Jo’s children are more than a credit to her.
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Spen Valley (Kim Leadbeater)—she is my friend—for everything. I thank her for her sheer unrelenting energy. I thank her for deciding to come here, stepping into public life in circumstances that most of us cannot comprehend. I thank her for her dogged persistence on everything from the importance of physical activity for all and of addressing loneliness and community, to access to green spaces. I thank her for building Jo’s legacy and for securing this debate today.
I am conscious that we meet today with events in Belfast causing fear and distress for affected children and their families. Hateful rhetoric is never just words; it has consequences. I think of all those who are dealing with the consequences: those who are hurt and those who are helping to care for people who need it.
Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)
I did not serve in this Parliament at the same time as Jo Cox, but I have served here at the same time as my friend, the hon. Member for Spen Valley (Kim Leadbeater). I recognise on my behalf, and that of a number of MPs who she and I engage with cross-party, that she really embodies the legacy of her sister—that, cross-party, there is more that unites than divides us—and it is an honour to be here today.
Alison McGovern
I thank the hon. Lady for her words, which are spot on.
Ten years ago next week, I was in Portcullis House next door when I received a message from the now Chancellor of the Exchequer telling me that our friend Jo Cox, the then Member for Batley and Spen, had been murdered in her constituency. It remains the worst moment of my life in politics. That someone so courageous and strong, someone small in stature but enormous in spirit, should be killed like that is as horrific today as it was in that moment. At the time of her killing, her loved ones and friends decided that it was she who should be talked about, not the person who killed her. Her life, her work, her beliefs are important; helping her murderer achieve any notoriety is not. Today, we meet to put her legacy on the record again.
Jo was a parliamentarian for just a year, yet her life before becoming an MP had been so adventurous and full, and she had already seriously influenced politics. There is therefore much about her whole life to talk about.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I commend the Minister for leading the debate. I recall well the Friday morning in my constituency office when the news broke. I immediately penned a letter because at that stage, Jo was still with us, although injured. I had hardly finished the letter when, unfortunately, the sad news came through that she had passed away. To her sister, the hon. Member for Spen Valley (Kim Leadbeater), and to all her family, I will say that we very much think of them and our prayers are with them as well. We always remember, as the Minister said.
I cannot be here for the whole debate, as I am leading another debate in Westminster Hall, so I want to put these words on record. I admired Jo for her courage and for her advocacy of her constituents. No one doubted her determination, and when she spoke we were always moved by what she had to say. Today, 10 years later, we still remember her with fondness.
Alison McGovern
On behalf of us all in this House who have ever received the kindness of a letter from the hon. Gentleman, I say to him that he embodies the “more in common” spirit and we are so grateful to him for doing so. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”]
Whether someone is inspired, as we all are, by Jo’s work in international development—travelling around the world to stand up for women in the most dangerous environments—the impressive physical challenges she undertook, or the manner in which she included people, whatever their background or beliefs, this is the story of a woman whose life may have been cut short, but whose contribution will be remembered and will continue always. Members from across the House will share their own stories today, and I encourage them all to do so with joy.
For my part, I will never forget sitting on the Opposition Benches during a turbulent time in Labour politics, when Jo showed leadership on the horrors in Syria while far too many others equivocated or looked the other way. I will never forget her sense of humour and fun, or her unrelenting hope that there was always something we could do.
Much has been achieved in Jo’s name and in that spirit in 10 years. From the Jo Cox Women in Leadership graduates to the thousands of people who have been along to a Great Get Together, her impact on the people of this country has never weakened.
Jeff Smith (Manchester Withington) (Lab)
Jo was a shining star of our 2015 intake; she was loved by us all, and is missed and remembered every day. I am pleased that the Minister mentioned Jo’s work on Syria, which the Minister was herself involved in. We worked together on that. The fact is that Jo is remembered not just by people in this House but by people around this country, including the Syrian diaspora community in Manchester. I know through my work with the community that they remember Jo very fondly, as do all the vulnerable communities she stood up for so passionately and brilliantly.
Alison McGovern
I am so grateful to my hon. Friend for making that intervention, because it is not possible to visit the Syrian community in Manchester without talking about Jo, given the impact she had on them.
Jo’s foundation has led the way in campaigning for decency and civility in politics and taking forward her pioneering work to achieve a public policy response to the loneliness epidemic. The foundation has also worked in West Yorkshire to maintain the local constituency community work that Jo did in Batley and Spen and beyond.
As we have said, Jo’s concern for civilians in the face of horrendous war led her to become the co-chair of the friends of Syria all-party parliamentary group, alongside the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Sir Andrew Mitchell). In her 104 contributions in the House of Commons, she was a constant voice for the child refugees pouring out of the hellhole that Syria had become. She pioneered the use of urgent questions, particularly from Back Benchers, to harry the Government into action. With terrible conflict raging, threatening the lives of children and other civilians, we can only imagine how much more forceful the response of the House of Commons to these horrors would have been if Jo had remained here. Notwithstanding that, there are Syrian refugees alive and safe today because of Jo. That is a lesson to us all about the opportunity we have to speak up in the face of outrage and indignity.
In the form of the Jo Cox memorial grants, her legacy reached around the world, helping 85,000 people, empowering women and preventing identity-based violence. At her home, Batley and Spen, the 10th Run for Jo will bring people together again for a day of fun and celebration.
All those good things happened because of Jo. They did not happen because she died; they happened because she lived. Her love was felt so far and so wide, and so is her legacy. I look forward to hearing all the contributions that Members will make today, with the memories and moments they wish to share. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Spen Valley once again for securing this debate, and all those across the country who are determined that Jo’s legacy will go on, always.
Sir Andrew Mitchell (Sutton Coldfield) (Con)
It is a pleasure to speak opposite the hon. Member for Birkenhead (Alison McGovern), with whom I have worked extensively over many years on international development, thereby demonstrating one of Jo’s core beliefs: more in common. The hon. Lady spoke so movingly about Jo and encapsulated perfectly the essence of who she was and what a politician should be: decent, principled, clear and determined.
I am delighted to see the hon. Member for Spen Valley (Kim Leadbeater), who secured this debate, in her place. She exhibits all of Jo’s brilliant qualities in fighting for the causes to which she is devoted, such as assisted dying, on which I am proud to work alongside her. The whole House recognises that on this very divisive issue, she showed incredible decency and probity in the way in which she pursued it.
I cannot quite believe that we are commemorating a whole decade since Jo’s life was brutally cut short. Ten years on, it is just as painful to comprehend. Jo was both my colleague and my friend. We were different in our politics and backgrounds, but on the issues that we were both passionate about, we moved in lockstep. Like the Minister, I remember exactly where I was when the horrific event took place.
Our paths first crossed when Jo and I marched together against injustice in Darfur through the centre of London. Subsequently, I met her in Sudan, in Darfur, in 2006 on two separate visits, one of which included the then Leader of the Opposition, David Cameron. Jo was a huge presence all those years ago, and I remember her also for her trademark scarves. I marvelled at the way she discharged her role at Oxfam in Sudan, supporting women and children and helping to secure water for the thousands of refugees living in camps. I still wear the green wristband she gave me then, as a reminder of the desperate plight of people caught up in what President Bush rightly described as a genocide.
And yet today, 20 years later, Sudan is still in crisis, with ethnic cleansing practised with impunity. Whereas 20 years ago the international community, through the United Nations and the African Union, put military forces on the ground to stop it, sadly today unbridled barbarism continues in plain sight, and the international community is doing nothing to stop it. I am sure the whole House will be grateful to the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) for leading a debate on this issue in Westminster Hall later today.
Shortly after her election in 2015, Jo asked me whether we could team up to run a new all-party group called friends of Syria. Without hesitation, I agreed. Syria was ablaze. She knew that I took a great interest in the Syrian refugee crisis from the Back Benches, watching with despair as the situation got worse and worse, as the Minister described so well. Jo was determined to use her experience and expertise to champion the dispossessed, and felt we might be well paired to campaign together. As she said in her maiden speech back in 2015,
“we are far more united and have far more in common than that which divides us.”—[Official Report, 3 June 2015; Vol. 596, c. 675.]
We would do well to reflect on her words and especially her character—fearless determination, unintimidated by tribal political pressures, putting the greater good above personal ambition and placing policy above party.
Jo and I worked closely together for a year until she was murdered. I loved every minute of it. We had a rather useful good cop, bad cop routine. Unusually for me, I found myself as the good cop. Needless to say, Jo relished the bad cop role, especially when confronting the villains of the piece, and believe me when I say that she took no prisoners. On one occasion, we were taking tea with the Russian ambassador to remonstrate about the appalling crimes committed in Aleppo in Syria. The ambassador had recently complained to the Foreign Office that in the House, I had compared Russia’s bombing of Aleppo to the Nazi bombing of Guernica during the Spanish civil war. During the meeting, Jo did most of the hard-ball talking, and at the end of it she had triumphantly reduced a seasoned diplomat to incoherence, laying bare his inability to defend the indefensible. I very much doubt he will ever forget that meeting.
Today, we need more people like Jo. The climate 10 years after her murder is even more febrile and more divided. We have all seen the shocking examples of that recently, and we must not forget that in the end, Jo was a tragic victim of those divisions. Her murder sent shockwaves through us all, yet lessons have not been learned, and a few years later, the wonderful Sir David Amess paid the same price. We must also not forget the MPs who were murdered before: Airey Neave in 1979; Robert Bradford in 1981; Anthony Berry in 1984; and my beloved friend and colleague Ian Gow, on Monday 30 July 1990, as he left his home at the Dog House in Hankham near Eastbourne to serve his constituents. All were murdered by terrorists while serving their constituents.
Today we are witnessing more and more the consequences of polarisation, wrought by fear and cynical exploitation. Divisions are growing and principled politicians are declining, yet this debate underlines that in these dark days there is more that unites us, and so much of the work we do in this place is not characterised by division. Jo would have been appalled by Boris Johnson’s decision first to vaporise the Department for International Development, and secondly to slash the development budget. I suspect she would have been even more incandescent to learn that a Labour Government had gone even further, and I have no doubt in my mind that were she alive today, she would have fought tooth and nail to stop it from happening. Unfortunately, very few people have put their heads above the parapet, for reasons that we all understand—fear of missing out on promotions, of facing demotions, or of generally rocking the boat. Politics is a fragile business.
Iqbal Mohamed (Dewsbury and Batley) (Ind)
The importance of international development aid cannot be overstated. I recognise the need for a nation to be prepared to defend itself against threats from outside and from within, but does the right hon. Gentleman agree that funding for that should not come from international development aid?
Sir Andrew Mitchell
Yes, I agree with the hon. Gentleman. International development is the other side of the defence coin. The two work together, and the role of soft power is enormously important in preventing conflict and war. I see that the Leader of the House is with us today, and I hope very much that he will restore the old custom that once a year there should be a debate on international development in the House, in Government time. When I next have a chance to speak during business questions, I shall perhaps ask him whether he will consider that.
The passage of time will never erase Jo’s memory and legacy, and her profound impact on those who had the pleasure of knowing, loving and working with her. I am looking forward to hearing contributions from many hon. Members, as we all take comfort in the memory of a truly wonderful human being.
Kim Leadbeater (Spen Valley) (Lab)
I thank the Minister and shadow Minister for their beautiful and thoughtful opening remarks, and I thank colleagues and friends from across the House for attending this debate, during what I know is a busy time in politics—it was ever thus. I also thank the many colleagues who have contacted me to let me know that, sadly, they could not be here due to other commitments. Their messages have been gratefully received.
Today, 10 years since her murder, we gather to remember Jo. Jo Cox was, yes, an MP, and that is how many people do and always will think of her. But while being an MP is of course a very important job, like all of us Jo was so much more. She was a daughter, a mum, a wife, a colleague, a friend to many in this place and far beyond, and she was my sister. She was a very special person who embodied compassion, courage and an unwavering belief in the goodness of people. She was a woman who dedicated her life to public service, to fighting injustice and to bringing people together.
Helen Joanne Leadbeater—I know, who knew?—was born at Dewsbury and District hospital in West Yorkshire in 1974. She did not come from privilege or a political dynasty; she came from ordinary roots, and she carried with her throughout her life a deep understanding of ordinary people’s struggles, hopes and fears. We had a great childhood—nothing fancy or posh, but always surrounded by love, family and friendship. We had two wonderful parents who gave us the freedom and space to find our own way in life, and the support and stability to develop the confidence to do so. We had a close-knit family and a wide-ranging group of friends. And, of course, we had each other.
I have reflected a lot on our childhood over the last decade and I am so lucky to have an abundance of happy memories. The early years: walking to school, climbing trees, pretending we were in the A-Team, making up dance routines to Wham! and playing out until it was dark and we got called in for our tea. The teenage years and beyond: exams, holidays, parties, boyfriends. On more than one occasion I have been very grateful for there being no camera phones back then; I am not sure that either of us—or possibly any of us here today—would have ever had a career in public life if there had been. We certainly had plenty of fun.
Jo and I also had instilled in us a core set of values and beliefs. Our parents taught us to treat everybody with respect, kindness and empathy. They taught us simple principles, like treating people how you would wish to be treated; listening to different views and perspectives; compromising when necessary and agreeing to disagree; and, in true Yorkshire style, how sometimes, if you do not have anything good to say, to just keep your gob shut. These things were not drilled into us—they were more inherently included as part of everyday life, and they stayed with us both throughout our lives.
We were always both incredibly interested in other people and always had lots of questions when we met someone new. From a young age, we took great pleasure in hearing stories of people from a wide range of backgrounds. The differences were not a focus, but nor were they invisible; they were to be cherished and celebrated.
Jo was genuinely one of the nicest people you could hope to meet, but she was not naturally confident—she was actually very shy when we were kids. I am always really honest about this when I speak to people, particularly young people and often women, because sometimes when we see successful people in public life, we assume that they have always been really confident and self-assured, with no self-doubts, hang-ups or anxieties. In my experience, that is often not the case—and it is certainly not for me and it was certainly not for Jo. When we were teenagers, she would ask me to ring up to order the takeaway or check the bus timetable.
Over the years, Jo worked incredibly hard to overcome her fears and doubts. She made no secret of the difficulties she had settling into life at Cambridge University. As a working-class northerner, it felt like a world away from life in West Yorkshire, much like this place, in many ways. We missed each other desperately and both felt acutely lonely, but in true Jo style, she stuck it out and battled on. She was very grateful for the education that she received and, more importantly, for the strong friendships she made.
Before entering Parliament, Jo spent years working on humanitarian causes, helping vulnerable people around the world. She worked for organisations that sought to alleviate poverty, defend human rights and support those devastated by conflict and disaster. Her politics were never rooted in power or glory. They were rooted in empathy and humanity. When she became the MP for Batley and Spen in 2015, she brought that same humanity into public life. She spoke passionately about loneliness, inequality, refugees and community cohesion. She believed politics should improve lives, not inflame hatred. Perhaps her most famous words, from her maiden speech in this place, capture her entire philosophy: her belief, as has been said,
“that we are far more united and have far more in common than that which divides us.”—[Official Report, 3 June 2015; Vol. 596, c. 675.]
It speaks to something essential in our society—something that in recent times we seem to be seriously at risk of forgetting.
I could talk all day about how great Jo was—and she really was—but you need only to look at the many tributes that came in from across the world when she was killed to see that for yourself. It is always very important for me to remember that it was Jo, and more specifically her murder, that brought me to this place, and all of us together today.
Jo was murdered on 16 June 2016, just one week before the Brexit referendum and a week before her 42nd birthday. Jo had worked in some of the world’s most dangerous countries, but she was killed not in some distant place or in a war zone, but on the streets of her constituency, while carrying out her democratic duty as an elected representative, 10 minutes from where we live. Jo’s murder shocked the nation, it horrified the world, it left our family utterly bereft and it left two small children without their mum.
Those children are of course Jo’s most important legacy, and I am delighted to report that they are doing brilliantly. They are very like Jo in so many ways and they are annoyingly good at everything. They are musical, they are sporty, they are academic and they are really nice human beings. When they come up to Yorkshire, we try to find something that we can beat them at—and we fail every time. They are very much in my thoughts today and every day. As a family, we have ensured that they have been bathed in love for the last 10 years, just as Jo would have wished, and they are thriving as a result.
We have worked incredibly hard as a family to stay positive and strong, and we have been supported by so many wonderful people who have done so many amazing things in Jo’s name, which I will come to, but this year I feel that we also need to address more directly why Jo was killed. We must be honest about the atmosphere in which Jo’s murder took place. The Brexit referendum was one of the most divisive periods in modern British history. People were encouraged to see each other not as neighbours with differing opinions but as enemies. Public discourse became increasingly toxic, fear was weaponised, anger became political currency, complex issues were reduced to slogans and compromise was portrayed as weakness.
Of course, disagreement is part of democracy, debate is healthy and passion in politics is natural—Jo would be the first to say so—but what developed at that time went beyond disagreement and became something much darker. Social media amplified outrage. Politicians and commentators often chose confrontation over understanding, because division attracted attention. Entire communities were fractured. Families argued, friendships broke down and trust in institutions collapsed. In that climate, hatred found oxygen.
Anna Dixon (Shipley) (Lab)
I am so moved by my hon. Friend’s words about her sister. I commend her for her amazing bravery and courage in stepping into her sister’s shoes and being an amazing MP for Batley and Spen. I thank her for her words. As some hon. Members may know, I was a contemporary of Jo’s at university; I am just sorry that although we knew people in common, I did not know her.
I fear that the division and hate that my hon. Friend is speaking about, which fuelled Jo’s murder, continues to spread, and that if anything abuse and threats against MPs is on the rise. Does she agree that all hon. Members across the House must redouble our efforts to uphold civility in politics, to follow Jo’s shining example? I commend the continuing work of the Jo Cox Foundation to support civility in our politics.
Kim Leadbeater
I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. It is lovely that she, a fellow Yorkshire MP, is with us today. I absolutely agree with her. We can reflect on that time in 2016—to me, a lot of it is a blur—but to say that Brexit was responsible for Jo’s murder would be simplistic and untrue. There is one individual who committed that heinous crime: a far-right neo-Nazi, whose evil act was his and his alone. However, things do not happen in a vacuum, and we cannot ignore the broader social and political atmosphere that surrounded it. Toxic rhetoric, scapegoating and the dehumanisation of opponents all contributed to a society under immense strain.
Words matter. The language we use in politics matters, because language shapes culture and culture shapes behaviour. When people are constantly told that others are traitors, enemies, invaders or threats to the nation, eventually some individuals begin to believe that hostility and violence are justified. Tragically, we have seen that again in recent weeks and days. We must all call it out. That is why remembering how and why Jo was killed matters so deeply. If we reduce her death to an isolated act, we learn nothing. If we refuse to examine the environment of anger and polarisation that surrounded it, we fail both her memory and our democracy.
Sadly, a decade later, many of the same forces are still with us—perhaps even stronger. Today, polarisation dominates public life. Across politics, media and online platforms, people are increasingly pushed into opposing camps. Nuance disappears, and every issue becomes a battle. Every disagreement becomes moral warfare. We see a growing blame culture in Britain. When the economy struggles, when public services let us down, when communities feel left behind, someone must be blamed— migrants, politicians, the poor, the rich. The young blame the old, the old blame the young, cities blame rural communities, rural communities blame cities, and through all of that we risk losing sight of our shared humanity.
Social media algorithms reward outrage, because outrage keeps people engaged. News cycles thrive on conflict, because conflict generates clicks and views. Politicians can gain more support more easily by telling people who to fear than by offering difficult and complex long-term solutions. This constant division creates loneliness, mistrust, resentment and cynicism. It makes people feel unheard and angry. It encourages us to see one another not as fellow citizens, but as opponents to be defeated. That is dangerous for any democracy. A healthy society cannot survive if its people stop believing in one another.
I also want to pay tribute today to Sir David Amess—another colleague and friend to many in this place—who was murdered by an Islamist extremist in 2021. His family and friends have been very much in my thoughts in recent weeks. We cannot allow ourselves to be divided by the evil actions of ideological extremists, whatever sick views they are peddling. So the question becomes: what do we do about it? How do we honour the memory of Jo, not just with words, but with action?
In the past 10 years, we have seen an abundance of action in Jo’s name. In the face of the worst of humanity, we have seen the very best of it, in so many ways, including of course through the work of the Jo Cox Foundation—the charity set up by Jo’s family and friends in the months after she was killed. It works on issues as diverse as the protection of civilians in conflicts, such as in Syria; the promotion of women in all aspects of public life—it is great to see so many sisters here today; on loneliness and isolation; and on the related work to build closer and stronger communities at home and abroad.
The trailblazing work that Jo started on loneliness resulted in the world’s first ever Minister for loneliness—my good friend and colleague, Tracey Crouch—and the first ever Government strategy on loneliness. The UK is still seen as a world leader on this really important subject, and I strongly urge the Government to update the cross-departmental strategy to ensure that we do not lose that reputation.
Katie Lam (Weald of Kent) (Con)
I am sorry to say that I did not know the hon. Lady’s sister, but she sounds like a remarkable woman. I am one of two sisters, and I recognise very much from growing up the sort of family structure that the hon. Lady describes. What a testament it is to Jo as a person that, having grown up in such a family and known what the opposite of loneliness is—what companionship and family are—she thought first of people who did not enjoy that. That is a real testament to the person she was.
Kim Leadbeater
The hon. Lady is absolutely right. That is a testament to Jo’s empathy—something that we could all learn from in this House.
I think about what happened in Jo’s constituency of Batley and Spen after she was killed. An amazing group of volunteers came together under the “more in common” banner to ensure that our community was not torn apart by Jo’s murder. It is a non-political group made up of people from a wide variety of backgrounds who, on the surface, may appear to have very little in common. It is a strange and somewhat dysfunctional family, but it works. We have seen groups like it across the country, and they achieve some fantastic things, which Jo would have loved. The Great Get Together is at the heart of this work, and the perfect opportunity to demonstrate the “more in common” ethos in action.
Tonia Antoniazzi (Gower) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech, and her sister was an absolute legend.
I want to make a very light-hearted comment. As everybody knows, I am the chair of the all-party parliamentary beer group. I was really honoured this morning to stand with my hon. Friend behind the pumps in the Strangers Bar, with a beer that has been made in memory of Jo Cox. It is for sale in the bar. That is a testament to the people she reached and the lives she touched.
Kim Leadbeater
It was an absolute joy to be pulling a pint with my hon. Friend this morning in the Strangers Bar—just to be clear, we did not drink it. I am grateful to everybody involved in the Great Get Together beer. Through it, we have shown the power of the pubs, clubs and venues that we all have in our constituencies, where people can come together and share a drink, share a conversation, cross lines of division and have a good old time, because the Great Get Together is also about having fun. I remind colleagues that they are all invited to the Great Get Together event in Speaker’s House next Wednesday after Prime Minister’s questions. We will be catered for by Batley’s finest, Fox’s Biscuits, and I hope Members can join me.
Thousands of events take place across the Great Get Together weekend. Friendships are formed, bridges are built and communities are united in a way that is rarely seen, and nowhere more so than in Jo’s beloved West Yorkshire. We have organised rugby matches, bake-offs, iftars, coffee mornings and the annual Run for Jo, when hundreds of people run through the woods at Oakwell Hall in Birstall, and there is live music, food and entertainment. It is not about the running; it is about the coming together of families, friends and strangers alike.
This year’s Run for Jo takes place on Sunday 21 June, and the good news is that all Members are invited—woo-hoo! I believe that you will be down for it, Madam Deputy Speaker. People do not have to run—they can just come and enjoy the day—but I hope that they come up to Yorkshire, even if only to take part in my cheesy ’80s aerobics warm-up, in which I get to revisit my previous career as a fitness instructor. Leg-warmers and leotards are always very welcome.
We also have the beautiful Jo Cox community wood in Spen Valley and the Jo Cox Way bike ride, which sees cyclists travel 280 miles from Yorkshire to London every summer. We have the Jo Cox sixth-form centre at Heckmondwike grammar school, which Jo and I attended and where mum and dad met and fell in love. We have the Place Jo Cox in Brussels and the Rue Jo Cox in Avallon in France—Jo’s legacy spreads far and wide.
So much has been done over the last 10 years to remember Jo and to ensure that her name and her values are never forgotten, but, as Jo herself would say, there is undoubtedly always more to do, and I believe that we can and must all play our part. We must rebuild respectful dialogue. We need to rediscover the ability to disagree without hatred. Democracy depends on argument, but it also depends on mutual respect. Someone who votes differently from us is not automatically ignorant, wrong, evil or beyond redemption. We must resist the temptation to caricature entire groups of people. We must challenge toxic rhetoric wherever it appears.
Catherine Fookes (Monmouthshire) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend for her amazing speech. I also have sisters, and I cannot imagine standing here and doing what she is doing, so I thank her for her bravery. I never met Jo, but her legacy absolutely lives on through my hon. Friend.
Some of our opponents would have it that Britain is broken, that we are at war and that people do not care for one another any more, but my hon. Friend is showing that there is a huge swathe of people across the United Kingdom—including in Wales, where I am from, and in my seat of Monmouthshire—who care for and constantly look out for one another and support people, and who do not want the worst for our country. Does my hon. Friend agree that the idea of coming together and community is alive and well in our community and that we must all celebrate it?
Kim Leadbeater
I thank my hon. Friend and could not agree with her more. No one is pretending that we do not have challenges or that there are not difficult issues to tackle, but that is not the story of our country. The story of our country is all the amazing people we are elected here to serve and who are doing brilliant things in our communities across the whole country. That makes it even more important that we challenge toxic rhetoric wherever it appears. That responsibility belongs to everyone, including politicians, journalists, broadcasters, online influencers and ordinary citizens alike. We cannot stay silent when language becomes dehumanising or inflammatory. Freedom of speech is vital, but it comes with moral responsibility.
We have to invest in our communities. Polarisation grows when people become isolated from one another. Strong communities create empathy, because they bring different people together. Local organisations, youth groups, charities, libraries, sports clubs, faith groups and community centres—all of which we have in our constituencies—play a vital role in strengthening our social bonds. When people know each other personally, hatred becomes much harder to sustain.
We must also teach critical thinking, political education and media literacy, which are really crucial parts of our education. We live in an age of misinformation, manipulated outrage and online echo chambers. Young people especially need the tools to navigate a world in which anger spreads faster than truth.
Rachel Gilmour (Tiverton and Minehead) (LD)
I never met the hon. Lady’s sister, but I absolutely remember when she was taken from us. I admired her hugely, and I still do. The fact that there are so many new Members of Parliament in the Chamber this afternoon tells a story—that her memory is still alive and well, and we still hold her dear.
On the hon. Lady’s point about children needing more education, the late Sir David Amess was very keen that we set up something called the Children’s Parliament, and I was very privileged to be asked to be the chair of the relevant APPG. Again, Jo’s memory goes on, hopefully not just for my rather elderly generation but for children and generations afterwards. Does the hon. Lady agree that that is a commendable aspiration?
Kim Leadbeater
I wholeheartedly agree and thank the hon. Lady for her intervention—and also for calling me a young lady. [Laughter.] Having just turned 50, I will take that! She is absolutely right: we need to do so much to support our young people who are growing up in a world with so many challenges that most of us in this place just did not face.
We have to encourage curiosity, evidence-based discussion and thoughtful engagement, rather than knee-jerk reactions to things. We have to remember that politics should serve people, not consume them. Politics matters enormously because it shapes lives, but when political identity becomes the sole measure of a person’s worth, society becomes tribal and unstable.
Finally, we must choose empathy. Empathy is not weakness. Compassion is not naiveté. Understanding another person’s fears does not mean abandoning our principles, and Jo understood that.
Dr Zubir Ahmed (Glasgow South West) (Lab)
I did not know Jo, but I acutely remember the day when Jo was murdered. I was working as a doctor across the river in Guy’s hospital. I remember being unable to sleep that night, and seeing my right hon. Friend the Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting) and my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Yardley (Jess Phillips) on television mourning their friend.
I have subsequently had the pleasure of getting to know my hon. Friend the Member for Spen Valley (Kim Leadbeater). She is a credit to her sister and to this place, and in the way she has taken forward the assisted dying debate, on which we have differing views. Does she agree that the space and the toxicity she talks about is a social media landscape now, much more than it was even 10 years ago? We have a responsibility not to leave the next generation alone as they navigate that space, and we must be compelled, as a Government, to regulate that space and protect young children’s impressionable minds there.
Lastly, as a teetotal doctor, I encourage everyone who is not bound by religious obligation—perhaps even the hon. Member for Gorton and Denton (Hannah Spencer), who is absent today—to go and partake in Jo’s beer.
Kim Leadbeater
I thank my hon. Friend for his most marvellous intervention, and for wearing a beautiful coloured tie, which perfectly co-ordinates with the Jo Cox Foundation logo. He is absolutely right, and he is such a valuable addition to this place. I thank him for his friendship.
Kim Leadbeater
She would have loved you.
It is so important that we keep empathy and compassion at the heart of our politics, and Jo understood that better than most. She believed deeply in human dignity. She believed that people from different backgrounds could live together peacefully. She believed that Britain is strongest when it is open-hearted rather than fearful. That belief cost her her life, but it must not die with her.
If there is one lesson we should take from Jo’s legacy, it is this: hatred grows when good people become indifferent to division. The answer to polarisation cannot be more polarisation. The answer to fear cannot be more fear. The answer must be courage—the courage to listen, the courage to speak responsibly, the courage to reject extremism in all its forms, the courage to defend democratic values even when emotions run high and, most importantly, the courage to remember that we belong to one another.
In remembering Jo today, let us not simply mourn what was lost; let us ask ourselves what kind of country we want to become. Do we want a society defined by outrage and suspicion, or one defined by compassion and solidarity? Do we want future generations to inherit division, or do we want them to inherit hope? That choice is ours. Perhaps the greatest tribute we can offer Jo is not merely to repeat her words, but to live by them and to show in all our actions and behaviours that we really are far more united and have far more in common than that which divides us.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)
I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.
Susan Murray (Mid Dunbartonshire) (LD)
My goodness, how do you follow that? I thank our friend the hon. Member for Spen Valley (Kim Leadbeater) for that wonderful tribute to her sister. I am grateful to speak in this debate and to have the opportunity to honour the work and legacy of Jo Cox. Jo served in the House before my time here began, but I want to speak in the debate because of the way she approached politics, always understanding that we have more in common than divides us.
In preparing for the debate, I looked not just at how Jo is remembered but the work she did. What stands out is a woman who did politics that was practical, human and rooted in the lives of people who too often went unheard. In her work on Syria, when she pressed the House to look clearly at the reality facing civilians and to recognise that sympathy was not enough, she said:
“It is now time for us to listen and to act.”—[Official Report, 12 October 2015; Vol. 600, c. 140.]
That, for me, is the heart of Jo’s legacy: not just compassion, but compassion turned into action. That is the message we need to reflect on today.
Too often, we see how easy it is to create anger or mistrust—to develop rhetoric to tear things down. We see that today in those stoking racial hatred and religious division. It is much harder to make real positive change, but that is exactly what Jo did. The Jo Cox Foundation has carried that work on, and the Great Get Together is a fantastic example of that. It is not complicated and it does not ask people to agree on everything; it simply asks people to come together to share food, to talk, to meet neighbours and to remember that community works in all its diversity.
We see that in our own constituencies, too. I invite Members to Sked’s Garden on 21 June, where we are having a massive barefoot ceilidh as a free event, which everyone is invited to. In Mid Dunbartonshire I see other groups, such as the Men’s Shed, Apna Ghar, the Hive, GRACE—Group Recovery Aftercare Community Enterprise—and Gavin’s Mill, everything from heritage groups to community development trusts, offering people a safe and welcoming place to rebuild lives, reduce social isolation and promote wellbeing at home and internationally.
My own life took an unexpected turn when I became a full-time carer, and I experienced how important the support of community is. Jo understood that loneliness is not a side issue; it is something that can quietly shrink a person’s life. It affects old people, younger people, carers, bereaved families, and many people who would never say out loud that they are lonely. Her work helped Parliament to take that seriously, and we should keep taking it seriously.
We all have lessons to learn from Jo’s example. We can disagree strongly, and at times maybe we should, but we cannot treat each other as enemies because of our differing views. We must look for common ground to build solutions on. The best tribute we can pay is not just to remember her, but to continue the work she left for us: to encourage more women to choose to enter politics, to choose to listen, act and build community, and to choose to make our politics a little braver and a little kinder.
Jess Phillips (Birmingham Yardley) (Lab)
I do not have any notes written down, because when I tried to write things down this morning, I just kept crying, but I shall try to get through this regardless.
Many brilliant things will be said about Jo today, and my hon. Friend the Member for Spen Valley (Kim Leadbeater) has given us much insight. I want to start my remarks where she ended hers, in that we have to live the values of Jo’s words, not just say them. When I was reflecting this morning about my friendship with Jo, I thought about how Jo was a doer. She was always coming up with a scheme of some kind or another—some of them ridiculous, I have to say. I text the Minister on the Front Bench this morning, saying, “We do have to remember that sometimes she was quite mental!”
I reflected on the fact that she made me into one of her projects. When I arrived here, I did not know many people—I was not the popular girl I am now—and I did not live in London. My family were at home in Birmingham, and I had been to Parliament one time before working in this building. She made it so that I always had somewhere to go. She sought me out, she made friends with me, and she took me to have dinner with her family, because I could not go home to mine. She invited me to events—she tried to make connections for other people. There has been a lot of talk recently about the boys’ club in politics—we have seen a little bit behind some curtains—but Jo was definitely trying to make a girls’ club. She would make sure that you were introduced to the right people. If she heard you talking about things that you were interested in and she had a connection, she wanted you to have it.
But the greatest connection that Jo gave me was to invite me into her family. To this day, the place where I go when I am sad or things are difficult, or just when I fancy a drink and a celebration, is the moorings where Jo lived. When I resigned the other day and I was all a-tizz, I went to sit with Cuillin and Lejla, to eat a takeaway and do Cuillin’s GCSE homework with him— I kept shouting “oxbow lakes” at him repeatedly, which yesterday he told me was not all that helpful.
The legacy of Jo Cox in my life is that she gave me a family to be part of when I was away from my family. There is not a time when things have been hard and they have not been there for me. I recently lost my sister-in-law, and the people who were there for me—to make sure I could help raise my nephews without their mom—were Brendan, Cuillin and Lejla. They are the most important legacy that Jo has, and I am eternally grateful that when we first arrived in this place together, she tried to make sure that we had connections; that nobody would be lonely; that somewhere would always be available for you to have a cup of tea or a curry, or do geography homework. It is mundane—it is the small mundanity of kindness.
The way that Jo’s family have kept her alive in Cuillin and Lejla’s minds is so phenomenal. Yesterday, Lejla made a speech in No. 10. She said, “My mom was a brilliant mom, she was a brilliant Member of Parliament, and she was a brilliant friend.” I know, because she told me, that her mom felt like she was not good enough at any of those things, but the way Lejla remembers it—the way she has grown up remembering her mother—is far more accurate than the way her mother felt about herself.
I try to encourage young women to get involved in politics, so Lejla came out with me once to go door-knocking in an election. I remember her sat in the back of my car as we were driving to the meeting point— I think the election was for the West Midlands Mayor; I am sure Lejla was deeply involved in wanting to do that—and talking about a memory that must have been given to her. She said, “When my mom was standing for election, because we don’t have the right accent, we had to be taught how to say, ‘Vote for Jo!’” [Laughter.] There was just total delight in this little girl faking a Yorkshire accent while in the west midlands.
What Jo gave me in life was friendship and family that has endured to this day, and what she gave me in politics—which I think actually is still quite rare—was to show me that you have to be courageous, you have to be brave, and sometimes you have to stick your neck out quite a long way. I often think of that—certainly in relation to Gaza, for example—and constantly wish she was here. I still sometimes send her text messages, as if she is alive. I wish she was here to talk us through these things in this House. I think, “What would Jo do now? What would Jo say in this circumstance?” I can think of no better person who could be here right now, in the politics we face today, than Jo. The remarks that my hon. Friend the Member for Spen Valley has made today—it is now really hard for me not just to say her name —are not just a nice speech to hear, but the embodiment of living like Jo and loving like Jo.
It does not matter which political persuasion or flavour you are, the idea that everybody in this Chamber is some sort of baddie over there is the easiest political line. If the line that you have to take to get likes, clicks and popularity is that there is some sort of shadowy institution in this place made up of people who will never understand the world, and that is why we are the better alternative, or if you are saying that the only reason things are bad in our country is because of x or y over there—when I was a kid, it was single moms; now it is immigrants—it is the politics of stupidity. Any fool can behave like that. There is no value in it whatsoever.
We did not allow that kind of politics to creep in at the time of Jo’s death, because we did not want her death to be politicised. We wanted her life and her legacy to be politicised; we did not want to stare down what it was actually about at the time, because we wanted to forge her legacy. That was the right thing to do, but every single day in this place and outside it, there are people doing the exact opposite: using people’s deaths to sell their political narrative. They should be ashamed of themselves.
If anything you say or do does not drive forward a good outcome for our country, do not do it. Do not say it. Jo would be a beacon in that regard, as her sister is, and I beg everybody to be much more like the actual people in our country, who—as my hon. Friend the Member for Spen Valley says—are good. If we all lived more like Jo and looked for somebody who needed connections that we might be able to give them, who maybe needed a cup of tea and a place to call home away from home, there would not be any of the division that there is today.
I did not meet Jo Cox on social media; I met her around a table with a cup of tea. I ask people to put down their phones—both in politics and in how we deal with our communities—to pick up a cup of tea, and to live and love like Jo did.
Siân Berry (Brighton Pavilion) (Green)
It is a privilege to follow the wise words of the hon. Members for Spen Valley (Kim Leadbeater) and for Birmingham Yardley (Jess Phillips), who have done a great job of embodying the various aspects of Jo that we are in the Chamber today to talk about. I join all the other Members who have spoken in paying tribute to Jo’s sister. She is a great parliamentarian—she is admired across the House for the way she works so diligently and courageously on so many issues, many of which I have in common with her. I am grateful to have learned today that we also share a legacy of dancing around to Wham! with our sisters. I will also be definitely trying the Great Get Together beer, but only after I have voted. I am so appreciative of every single one of Jo’s friends who are speaking today and who shared their parliamentary careers with her. I feel so sad, but so warmly towards them all. Their fortitude and the work they have all done in securing her legacy are huge.
In June 2016 I was not an MP, but I was a London Assembly member working at the old City Hall by Tower Bridge. I remember how I heard about Jo’s murder, like everybody, but I remember in particular seeing Jo and her young family speeding across the Thames in what I called later their plucky remain boat. I have a lovely photograph—I did not know it was of her until days later—of her and the family with an “In” flag whizzing about on the Thames as part of Bob Geldof’s rival flotilla in the final days of the referendum campaign. I remember feeling so delighted that day to have seen this example of good-spirited, memorable campaigning just outside my workplace. Obviously, all that changed.
Politics is supposed to be a way of resolving our differences creatively through communication, not violence. Losing Jo was a harrowing sign that that consensus, which many people were trying to keep going, had been somewhat shattered. We could have done, and can do, so much better in the UK in politics, in the media, online and in our communities by investing in what I call the real resilience—the real antidote—to hate, which is by keeping communities feeling valued and invested in. The most shining part of Jo’s legacy is undoubtedly the foundation, which works towards that goal. It embodies her spirit and her work, as does the incredible work carried out by the More in Common Network to build up communities and to call for connection over division. Ten years on from losing her, Jo’s “more in common” message feels more vital and urgent than I can say. The awful scenes we have witnessed this week, which other Members have mentioned, alone serve as a brutal reminder of how quickly anger can evolve into violence when people are turned against one another in our communities.
Finally, I turn to the question of how the anger that killed Jo was seeded and how it grew. It is a question that my predecessor, Caroline Lucas, thought a lot about. It led her to travel around the country in the months following the EU referendum to talk with people whose political views differed vastly from her own. Through that experience, she proved that Jo’s now infamous words from her maiden speech in this place were absolutely correct. Caroline has said about those conversations:
“More often it was refreshing and reassuring because there was so much more that we agreed on than held us apart. Many people were angry. Of course they were. But if you took the time to go, and paid them the courtesy of listening, then common ground could emerge.”
As MPs, we do not and certainly cannot agree on everything, but we must always strive to seek common ground.
Alison McGovern
I worked with the hon. Lady’s predecessor at that time. If I may, I send through the hon. Lady my very best wishes and thanks to her predecessor. I thank the hon. Lady for reading those words into the debate. It was a difficult time, and her predecessor played a full part.
Siân Berry
I thank the Minister for that, and I will certainly pass on that message. As MPs, we do not always agree on everything. It is our job to disagree, but to disagree well, with standards, compassion and ethics. We must always seek to find common ground where we can. When we disagree, we should do so with patience and respect, as Jo always did.
Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab)
It is a privilege to follow the hon. Member for Brighton Pavilion (Siân Berry). I will pick up on her last point, which was a challenge to all of us. There is always a danger, especially when you are a politician and you aspire to a better type of politics and a better type of discourse, that people will go through years-old media interviews, and increasingly your social media timelines, and say, “What about that time?” The point is—this was true of Jo, too—that none of us is perfect. We all aspire to be better, but we have to work at it.
If it were the case that everyone behaved brilliantly all the time and was always the best versions of themselves, we would not have the challenges of division, and if it is the case that we cannot change hearts and minds, and that people who are racist—or prejudiced in another way, or brutal in the way they go about their lives—cannot be better, why do we bother with anti-racism campaigns? Why do we fight for equality? Why do we do offender rehabilitation? We do so because we know that people are not born perfect, but nor are they born bad. The whole point of life is to aspire to be a better person, and to leave something better behind us—and my goodness did our friend Jo do that.
I can well understand why the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Sir Andrew Mitchell) can scarcely believe a decade has passed since Jo’s murder, because when he looks in the mirror every day, the same image is staring back at him. He has not aged a day, and I wish the same could be said for the rest of us.
In the short time this debate has been taking place, it has been really nice when people have got to their feet and opened by saying, “I did not know Jo,” because you did not need to know Jo; she always let you in. Even if you had not met her before, if you did not connect with her in some way, or if you did not have mutual friends, the door was open and she would let you in. In the short time we were in this place together, I realised how lucky we were to have become friends.
One of my abiding memories of Jo is in the Members’ Lobby around votes, because she was never standing still. She was always running around—ducking and diving, bobbing and weaving—trying to sort some deal out, or trying to get some motion signed or some cause over the line. She was a real troublemaker, in the best possible way.
It is hard following my hon. Friends the Members for Spen Valley (Kim Leadbeater) and for Birmingham Yardley (Jess Phillips), but they have given me courage today. Ten years ago, in the wake of Jo’s murder, I was asked to say a few words in this House on behalf of all of us who were elected alongside her in the 2015 intake of Labour MPs, and I could not do it. I did not think I would be able to hold it together, and I feared I would not find the words to do justice to the truly wonderful and powerful woman she was or to just how much she was loved—and is loved—by all of us who had the privilege to know her. My God, do we miss her. Her wisdom, experience and insight are so desperately needed now in our national life.
There is always a danger that when words are repeated often, they lose meaning or become a cliché. It is with that risk in mind that I dwell on those words, so well known from Jo’s maiden speech, where she said:
“While we celebrate our diversity, what surprises me time and time again as I travel around the constituency is that we are far more united and have far more in common than that which divides us.”—[Official Report, 3 June 2015; Vol. 596, c. 674-75.]
I feel exactly the same about my community—my home—in Redbridge as Jo did about her community in Kirklees.
Jo’s words were never intended to be sentimental; they were meant to be challenging. “More in common” does not mean pretending that our differences do not exist—Jo knew they did. She represented a constituency of proud Yorkshire towns and villages with different histories, different faiths, different traditions and different politics. “More in common” does not mean a politics without argument—Jo argued. Yes, she was able to work across party lines, but she was tribally Labour. She knew that change does not happen because people wish for it, or just because it is the right thing to do; change comes because people organise, campaign, persuade, demand and refuse to give up.
“More in common” certainly does not mean a politics without courage—it demands it. Jo had courage in abundance, whether it was courage to stand up for refugees fleeing war, courage to demand action to protect civilians in Syria, courage for women and girls facing violence wherever in the world they face that violence, or courage for the people of Batley and Spen, whose dignity and decency she reflected to the whole country.
To be courageous requires strength. Jo was strong, but there is a difference, especially in politics, between being strong and being brutal. Jo showed us that courage and kindness are not in competition, and they are two qualities that obviously run in the family. We are so blessed that Gordon and Jean gave our country two daughters to serve Batley and Spen, and now Spen Valley, and my hon. Friend the Member for Spen Valley gives true meaning to the words “honourable” and “friend”. It is a regular complaint of my mum’s that we use such language, by the way, because as far as she is concerned, there are not many honourable people in this place and she does not think I should be friends with any of them. [Laughter.] That is a consequence of social media.
My hon. Friend the Member for Spen Valley has warned that our country faces increasing polarisation. Her family, including Brendan and Jo’s two wonderful children, know better than anyone where extremism can lead. My hon. Friend is absolutely right: we face a choice about what kind of country we want to be. The Britain that I love, and the England that I love, is open, confident, generous and kind. It is serious, but with a great sense of humour, and it is a country that loves an underdog as much as being the top dog. We are a small island that has led the world in every industrial revolution, and whose language and literature, and songs and science, are enjoyed throughout the world. That is the Britain that we have to fight for and stand up for. I think it is the Britain of the majority of people in this country, and we must not let others grab the microphone or social media feeds to paint a picture to each other, or to the rest of the world, that does not reflect the true nature of what it means to be this United Kingdom.
In the week that Jo died, she brought together a whole group of us down in Wapping, where she lived, and we had the most wonderful party. There was a lot of laughing, a lot of talking and a lot of drinking. Awards were given—one day we should publish the list of the winners and ask, “Where are they now?” That was the last time I saw Jo.
That brings me to the political culture that we need to live by. We all came together as a tribe on that boat, and what was remarkable about the 2015 intake of Labour MPs is that we spanned the full spectrum of our wonderful and sometimes slightly dysfunctional Labour tribe. At a difficult time for our national politics, but also for our Labour politics, we were reminded in those moments of joy and laughter how much we have in common. When Jo sat on the Opposition Benches and looked at the other side of the House, she did not see enemies; she saw political opponents. She also saw opportunities, because her politics was about seeking converts, not traitors. It was about trying to reach across the aisle, where possible, to get things done and change things in a progressive and positive way. That is the kind of politics that we can provide when we are collectively at our best.
In this information and attention economy, where it is the sensational, the most outrageous and the most divisive language or words that grab attention, the tragedy is that the country does not get to see much of what goes on in this place—the all-party parliamentary groups, the camaraderie behind the scenes, and the overwhelming kindness of this place when people experience tragedy, as I found when I was going through cancer. The country does not get to see inside that Commons that we get to see every day, and we need to show more of it to the public, because they need to see in us what so often people here see in each other. That is what makes this country a wonderful country to live in.
I still believe that this country’s best days are ahead, not behind. We have a proud history, but ultimately there is no hope in nostalgia. The purpose of our politics is to be a better path to a brighter future, where opportunity and security are shared by all. We will build that future if we live like Jo, love like Jo and remember that we have far more in common than the things that divide us.
Iqbal Mohamed (Dewsbury and Batley) (Ind)
I did not know Jo Cox, and Jo Cox did not know me, but what I do know is that Jo Cox was my friend. Hers is a legacy that we must not just honour with words, but live in practice. This is an opportunity to remind the country of Jo’s passion, drive and reason for being, why she was in this place and why she is so deeply missed. I am privileged to speak in this debate, and I thank the hon. Member for Spen Valley (Kim Leadbeater)—my predecessor and constituency neighbour—for continuing Jo’s wonderful work and legacy. I salute you, my friend.
I was elected in 2024, so I did not have the honour of working with Jo, but—I am not saying this to cause offence to any Member—I feel that I know Jo Cox better than I know many Members of this House today, and it is not for want of trying. I absolutely adored the description given by the hon. Member for Birmingham Yardley (Jess Phillips), who said that Jo was “quite mental”. I would qualify that by saying she was quite good mental. There is mental and then there is mental, and she was of the good kind.
Having been elected as the Member of Parliament for Dewsbury and Batley, I feel extremely privileged to speak in this debate. Jo was born in Dewsbury and represented Batley and Spen, the two towns that I now represent, making it a special honour for me to be able to speak today. The values that she embodied and championed—tolerance, fairness and kindness—still echo powerfully across our communities. Much has rightly been made of Jo’s maiden speech, in which she spoke powerfully and eloquently about how
“we are far more united and have far more in common than that which divides us.”—[Official Report, 3 June 2015; Vol. 596, c. 674.]
That is an apt mission statement or motto for this place, but I have gone through Hansard to see what Jo said immediately before those remarks, which are now internationally recognised. The remarks that she made before that are just as important, even though they are less commented on. She said:
“Batley and Spen is a gathering of typically independent, no-nonsense and proud Yorkshire towns and villages. Our communities have been deeply enhanced by immigration, be it of Irish Catholics across the constituency or of Muslims from Gujarat in India or from Pakistan, principally from Kashmir.”—[Official Report, 3 June 2015; Vol. 596, c. 674.]
As we look at the unsavoury scenes that have unfolded across the UK in the past week, from Belfast to Southampton, Jo’s belief in the strength of diversity and the power of connection has never been more important. Listening, respecting differences and building bridges where others might be tempted to build walls all matter today more than ever, and they matter in this place. As we reflect on Jo’s legacy, we must be honest about the marked deterioration in the state of our public life since her heinous murder. Civility, the basic respect that underpins democratic disagreement, has been under unprecedented strain and attack in the past decade. We see it in the abuse increasingly directed at elected representatives, in the growing normalisation of unsavoury discourse and, perhaps most pervasively and drastically, in the digital spaces that increasingly shape our national conversation.
Jo understood that vehement disagreement is fundamental to any functioning democracy, but she also understood that democracy cannot function without a basic sense of humanity and a willingness to listen to the views of others in good faith. That is why we must confront one of the defining challenges of our time, which is the role of big tech and social media in poisoning our social fabric. Referring back to some of the comments we have heard, we must confront the wider ecosystem of public commentary from prominent political figures, media personalities and online influencers whose reckless or inflammatory language can help to create the conditions for real-world harm.
In the run-up to periods of unrest in communities across our country, we have too often seen divisive narratives, misinformation and the amplification of fear and grievance. Social media platforms have allowed such content to spread rapidly and without sufficient accountability. Why would they do so? Because every click, every like and every forward earns them more pounds or more dollars, and more money for their shareholders. The result is an environment where tensions can be heightened, trust eroded and, in the worst cases, communities pitted against one another. Yesterday, we heard about the violence and riots in Belfast, where masked people—men predominantly—went around the streets shouting, “Foreigners out!” They also went into people’s homes, evicted them and set their homes on fire. This cannot be accepted, tolerated or encouraged.
If we are to honour Jo’s legacy, we must be clear that freedom of expression carries responsibility, and that those with large platforms—whether in politics, media or tech—must be held accountable for the impact of their words. Too often, we have allowed these platforms to become amplifiers of anger, division and dehumanisation, without any restrictions. It is a far cry from the open, respectful dialogue on which democracy depends. The Jo Cox Foundation has rightly called for more actions to reduce online harms, but we in this House must be crystal clear that regulation has not gone anywhere near far enough or fast enough. Algorithmic systems reward outrage over empathy. They monetise violence and incitement to violence. Abuse and disinformation spread faster than compliments and the truth, and anonymity acts as a shield for those who seek to bully and threaten. These companies must be brought to heel both for the health of our younger generations and for the health of our democracy and our society.
There is a deeper, more insidious link between the toxic nature of online spaces and the growing crisis of loneliness in our society, of which Jo was such a prescient observer. The Jo Cox Commission on Loneliness put this issue firmly on the national agenda, and its relevance has only grown since. There are now half a million more people experiencing chronic loneliness than before the pandemic, with young people among the most likely to feel isolated. The evidence is clear that loneliness weakens social cohesion, reduces trust and leaves individuals more vulnerable to political polarisation and extremism, so when people feel disconnected from each other, our democracy itself becomes more fragile.
Jo instinctively understood that connection more than most parliamentarians, which is why her legacy is not just about remembrance, but about the responsibility we have in this House and the other place. It is a responsibility to rebuild civility in our politics and to calm tensions, not inflame them, both in this House and in our wider nation; a responsibility to strengthen the social fabric of our communities, not undermine them by pitting different groups against each other; and a responsibility to ensure that the technologies shaping our lives serve humanity, not damage it. That means taking seriously the call for a renewed cross-Government strategy on loneliness, and one that recognises social connection as fundamental to physical health, mental wellbeing and social cohesion. However, it also means going further. It means holding big tech companies to account for the environments they create, embedding safeguards against online abuse and disinformation, and investing in digital literacy so that people of all ages can navigate these spaces safely and critically.
Above all, it means leading by example, because every one of us in this House has a role to play in setting the tone of public debate. I promised in my maiden speech, to this House and to our nation, that I would not deliberately say or do anything to harm any other person. I try to live by that principle, and I apologise to Members of this House and to members of our nation if, in the 23 months I have been an MP, I have failed in that promise, but I will try to do better. We cannot call for civility while engaging in division, and we cannot demand respect while tolerating abuse. If we are to honour Jo’s memory, we must embody her values, not just invoke them. That starts with recognising, as she did, that our shared humanity is greater than our differences, and it continues with the choices we make about how we speak, how we listen and how we treat one another. So I end by echoing the words of the right hon. Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting) that we must love like Jo, live like Jo, care like Jo and serve like Jo.
Carolyn Harris (Neath and Swansea East) (Lab)
What an honour it is to be here in the Chamber, alongside 2015 friends—my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Yardley (Jess Phillips) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting) —and obviously my hon. Friend the Member for Spen Valley (Kim Leadbeater), to share my memories of Jo and talk about her legacy in a world that, quite honestly, could do with a lot more people like Jo in it right now.
On 7 May 2015, I was one of 177 new MPs elected for the first time. Fifty of us were Labour MPs, and 11 years later, 36 out of those 50 remain, but I have no doubt that, if it were not for the tragic and senseless act that day, there would be 37 of us now. Jo was a fellow newbie back in 2015, a respected colleague and someone I was proud to call a friend. She stood for everything that is right, and she was never afraid to share her beliefs or call out injustice.
My final and lasting memory of Jo is of just two days before, when she invited those of us in the 2015 intake to her houseboat to celebrate our first year in this place. I do not understand why—I have never quite understood it—but I am almost certain I won the prize for the best accessories and earrings. What I do remember is that we were greeted by a beautifully decorated chalkboard that the children had written, welcoming us—I’m getting choked thinking about it—to their home. None of us could have known that in less than 48 hours she would be gone. The memories of that evening are so precious and remind me of what an exceptional woman she was, opening up her home despite already juggling her responsibilities in Westminster and in Batley and Spen with being a devoted wife, daughter, sister and, most importantly, mother to two wonderful children. She was remarkable: passionate about everything she stood for and determined to make our country a better place for everyone who called it home.
It feels inconceivable that 10 years have already passed since we lost Jo. Returning to Parliament just days after her death and sitting on the Opposition Benches listening to the shock and horror felt across the House is something I will never, ever forget. Voices from every party spoke of how Jo was the very best of us, how her values were shared by us all and how important it was that we all lived by her words. Jo truly believed what she said in her iconic maiden speech: that in our diverse communities, right across the country, we have far more in common than the things that divide us. It is a message that perhaps even needs to be told more today than 10 years ago.
Much of my work in this place over the last 10 years has been on things that I know Jo would have taken an interest in: the ongoing campaign to encourage more women to stand for office and achieve a 50:50 Parliament; standing up against abuse in public office, particularly of female MPs; and our campaign to improve menopause support and services in healthcare, in the workplace and across society. I wish she had had the opportunity to fight those causes with us, because her voice would have been one well worth listening to. Jo always spoke with real conviction about the things that mattered most, and she cared immensely about those who felt targeted, isolated or alone. She celebrated diversity, she believed in the value of community, and she used her platform to be a voice for those who felt marginalised and silenced.
Jo’s legacy has already written itself. Indeed, the very words she herself spoke in this Chamber and beyond are just that. Hate and division should not be tolerated. Nobody should feel comfortable knowing that others are experiencing loneliness. If Jo’s one voice on its own could get that message across so clearly, imagine the impact if we all used our voices together to spread those words of love and hope.
Iqbal Mohamed
Does the hon. Lady agree with me that Jo was the change she wanted to see? That is a real example for all of us in this House and across our nation. We should follow in her footsteps and be the positive change we want to see.
Carolyn Harris
I certainly do. Jo’s vision is something I have tried desperately to live up to in all my political career.
In Jo’s memory, 10 years on from her tragic and untimely death, I urge colleagues from all parties—even those who are not with us today—to remember what she stood for, to amplify her message and to encourage others to celebrate the wonderful diversity of our country.
Jim McMahon (Oldham West, Chadderton and Royton) (Lab/Co-op)
It is a pleasure to follow the reflections of my hon. Friend the Member for Neath and Swansea East (Carolyn Harris). It is in the nature of this place that, when called to rise to the moment, the House does so. I think that that has been reflected across the Chamber today.
We often say that we should be more like Jo; it has become part of our common exchanges. However, I say to my hon. Friend the Member for Spen Valley (Kim Leadbeater) that I would like to be a bit more like Kim. She stewarded a very testing private Member’s Bill on a matter that was so profound and made us all think about those final moments when our time comes to an end, and she created a safe political space for all views on such a sensitive issue to be reflected. She does not just say the words; she embodies them. I really appreciate that and thank my hon. Friend for it.
Jo’s words really matter to us because they challenge us to be better. All of us come into politics because we have a desire to change the bit of the world we care about and feel connected to—our community, our town, our borough, our city—which we know can be so much better and often feel is held back from realising its potential. We come here to try to make a difference. This is a fairly odd place, let us be honest, with its quirk and its custom, and I think at times we do not always credit ourselves for the amount of work that goes on cross-party, when we pull together. That common interest—Members of all parties really care about and, I would say, love the place they represent—drives most of us in politics. Perhaps if we displayed that a bit more, we would build more trust in politics and its ability to make a difference. Jo’s words, that
“we are far more united and have far more in common than that which divides us”—[Official Report, 3 June 2015; Vol. 596, c. 675.]
are not just an anchor; they must be a challenge to all of us.
Sometimes we can meet that challenge through small acts of kindness such as saying hello to somebody walking down the corridor; they do not always have to be big gestures. If somebody is sitting at a table in the Tea Room by themselves, we should pull up a chair and join them. If a Member is feeling under pressure in their constituency—we all feel that, and try to get through it and keep our own house in order—reaching out to them and saying, “Do you know what, I saw what was going on in your town or city and I was thinking about you” goes a long way in recognising that we are not isolated. When we come down here to London, many of us are away from our support networks: our families who love us are not there when we go back to our accommodation at night. The people we rely on are generally the people in this place and sometimes that bit of decency means a great deal.
When I eventually move on to a different place, I will reflect on my time in Parliament. Of course I will think—hopefully—about the big things that I was able to achieve with the special privilege of being an MP, but I will also reflect on those small moments of kindness that made me realise why I got into politics to begin with. I think we can all do those things a bit more.
I came into Parliament on a by-election. By-elections are, as a number of Members will know, very weird things. You are caught in the storm of the noise of hundreds of thousands of people descending on your town—my thoughts are with the people of Makerfield at this time. I was going to say that it is a circus, but that does not quite do it justice. It is inspiring that so many people rally to get you over the line, but of course you soon realise that you were a mere legal necessity—a name required on the ballot paper. You arrive here among your new friends, and you wonder where your locker is, how to get your IT to work and so on. Jo was one of a number of people who reached out to me as a by-election candidate. She invited me to the party on the houseboat to make me feel a part of the 2015 intake. That is who she was. She did not know me any more than anybody else did in this place. I had not met her before, but she made an effort to reach out. I cannot say just how much that meant to me, when I came here. I see friends in the Chamber who did the same and I hope they feel that at times I have repaid that. Being a good person in this place goes a long way.
The reason why “more in common” strikes a note today is that it should endure. It feels self-evident: of course, we have more in common. Whatever troubles we have in our country, in the place we call home, our futures are bound together. What else have we got in common if not that shared endeavour and the future for ourselves and our families? In politics, that feels more contested today than it has ever been before. That is not because we have less in common, but because a lot of the political debate is consumed by what differences there are and what divides us. Too often, our politics encourages us to see what separates us before we see what binds us together. At times, those who take a different view are treated as not simply having a different perspective, experience, or background—simply coming at an issue from a different way—but as wrong and somehow lesser.
Jo understood that politics involved disagreement. She would never have pretended that there were not difficult issues to confront, but she also understood that words matter, and that those in positions of influence have a responsibility not merely to represent divisions in society but to lead people through them. Many Members in this place, as well as our mayors and our councillors, will have experiences that illustrate just how toxic parts of our political environment have become.
Helen Maguire (Epsom and Ewell) (LD)
I am sorry not to have known Jo, because she seems like someone who I would have got on incredibly well with. I am delighted that I have got to know her sister, the hon. Member for Spen Valley (Kim Leadbeater), and that we have worked cross-party on a number of issues. I know that Jo would have campaigned on similar issues, such as violence against women and girls. Recently, we had some awful protests in Epsom; they were about women’s safety, but they were hijacked by the far-right. Rather than being peaceful, the protests were violent and protesters attacked a property that housed vulnerable adults. They were trying to find immigrants. Does the hon. Member agree that today more than ever we must come together? As he mentioned, we need to discuss and debate the differences that we have, and if we protest we must do so peacefully, because we absolutely do have more in common than that which divides us.
Jim McMahon
I will come on to social media and the way that division is amplified and monetised, and how bad behaviour is often rewarded more than being a good citizen in that debate.
I am proud of our country and believe that the vast majority in this country are decent, hard-working people who want the best for themselves and their neighbours, whatever their background, race or religion. However, we have to look in the mirror collectively, as a country, and ask what has taken us to the point where an attack that all of us see as horrific, which has played out in Belfast over the last couple of days, could in any way justify the scenes of a family—women and children—running away from their house, which has been left in flames and smoke. That is where division has got us. How can we find ourselves in a situation where a woman fleeing war in Ukraine who has been homed in Belfast, finds her house being attacked, while violent protesters are egged on from Russia?
We have to reflect on the fact that cohesion does not happen by accident. People do not come together unless there is leadership that brings them together. Maybe we all need to be a bit more determined in calling out what is in plain sight. We must also accept that it has been a characteristic of politics in Britain since the EU referendum. At that moment, something changed. Being online has of course made it worse; the way that those divisions are exploited, and how extremism now has a platform that it did not have in the mainstream before, is all part of that.
I am not convinced that mainstream politics is adequately responding to the scale of the challenge that is in front of us. I do not feel that we have the regulations. At some point—my god!—Ofcom might realise that it is a regulator, and then who knows what it could achieve. We must ask whether the architecture is in place to deal with the scale of the challenge.
As we see homes set on fire, businesses damaged and people attacked, I would say that this is a national emergency. In a civil emergency, we would respond as a nation and a Government in a more determined way than we have seen. I fear that the power being held by a handful of very wealthy, powerful, connected individuals, who control our social media in the way that the old media was controlled by the wealthy and powerful for vested interests, is almost placing the Government into a position of fear—fear of the response if they take action. These things are not easy, but taking no action —or cautious action—is not rising to the challenge ahead.
I have three reflections on where we find ourselves. First, every elected representative has a responsibility not just to challenge views they disagree with but to build bridges across political differences and seek common ground wherever it can be found. We are elected to represent whole communities, not factions of communities. We should lead by example in the tone we set, the respect we show, and the openness with which we are willing to engage. That is not always easy—political disagreements are deeply felt—but little can be achieved without it.
Secondly, I continue to believe—although this is tested on a regular basis—that social media can be a force for good. It offers opportunities to connect people, to learn to organise, and to bring people together around shared interests and common causes. In fact, we all use it in this House—there is no one here who is not on one social media platform or another for those reasons. I do not begin by looking at social media from a point of cynicism about the technology itself. We have got to be honest about social media’s flaws, however, because too often the incentives that are built into platforms reward outrage over understanding, division over dialogue, and conflict over compromise. In many respects, previous generations could have barely understood the scale and pace of that, but the Government have to recognise and step up to the scale of the challenge.
Thirdly, we have to address the underlying tensions that drive fear, anxiety and anger. Where people feel insecure in their jobs, worried about their family’s future, unable to access housing, or disconnected from the opportunities available elsewhere, those concerns cannot simply be dismissed or ignored. We must respond with great urgency to the conditions that people feel, particularly when they say that they are unheard and feel left behind.
Alongside all that, we have to recognise that social cohesion is not a passive state. It does not happen by accident. It requires effort, compromise, and a willingness to listen, understand and sometimes disagree without condemning, rather than everything being a culture war or about identity, where the winners of the argument are those who can shout loudest, not those who can convince. That was the lesson that Jo Cox tried to teach us, and it remains as important today as when she first said it.
For some, those concerns might sound abstract. Quite often, we talk around the houses about social media regulation and its impact, but in a town such as Oldham, where we are now 25 years on from the Oldham riots, we know the cost when communities are torn apart and division is normalised. We know the cost when people live completely separate lives, not interacting in communities, the education system, the housing system or even in the economy; where the opportunities to meet people from a different background are the exception, not the rule; where people self-select to live a separate life, because it is easier and maybe more secure than making the effort to reach out and build bridges across different communities.
Iqbal Mohamed
To highlight the hon. Gentleman’s point, after the murder of Mr Nowak, Tommy Robinson said:
“The whole system is set against white people. And it must be smashed!”
In recent days, Musk has reposted messages claiming that the British Prime Minister hates white people and “millions must go”. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that this is the language of incitement to hatred and violence, and that wherever it is possible for our law to reach, the Government and law enforcement agencies must tackle that behaviour with the strongest force of the law?
Jim McMahon
It is clear that extremists will capitalise on the anxiety, fear and frustration that people feel in the country, and on the everyday problems they face. People are facing difficult circumstances now when trying to get a house that is affordable and secure, keep a job that can provide a good standard of living for themselves and their family, and feel safe in the community they call home where they are raising their kids—those are real issues that people face—and it is the oldest trick in the book to blame thy neighbour rather than the real cause of the problem.
I remember doing a kind of test at secondary school— I am not sure whether this is still done—in which the classroom was divided by the eye colour of the children in the class, with the blue-eyed kids on one side and the brown-eyed kids on the other. I was on the side with the blue eyes. We were given a handful of sweets to share among ourselves—a much bigger group of kids—while the brown-eyed kids were given a big bowl of sweets. There was more than enough for everybody in that group—they were stuffing their face and enjoying themselves. Within seconds, we had stopped looking at where the bigger bowl of sweets had gone and started squabbling among ourselves over the few sweets left on the table. Of course, the message was that when people are left to fight for scarce resource, they fight the person nearest to them, who is trying to fight for the same resource; the lesson was to look where the resource had been taken before it got anywhere near our table.
I say that because in a town like Oldham, people from every background are working hard, but there are not enough sweets to go around the community to give people a good standard of living and to make them feel safe in the communities where they live. I hear it from the white community and I hear it from the Muslim community. I hear it from people from every background, because we are all part of the same place, with the same hopes, fears and concerns about the future. It poses a real question for the Government about the economy and the fact that the wealth that we are creating is not being fairly distributed among society. The workers who are creating that wealth are fighting for scarce resource in a society that is, frankly, still setting working people against other working people.
The fact that race, religion or however many generations someone happens to have been British are dividing lines in an argument makes me really fearful. When it comes to matters of asylum and refugees, my town has a strong history of supporting people fleeing persecution. I have always thought that when looking into the eyes of a child in such a situation, we must think to ourselves: there but for the grace of God go I. If that was my child, what would I want as a response to protect the child I love? I expect our country to provide what it would for my child for children who are fleeing war.
Let us be honest, though: our asylum and immigration system is not working for people who are fleeing war and persecution any more than it is for anybody else. We have to get a grip of the system. It can be a bit too easy in politics to talk firm without outlining what is fair. We need to make sure that there is balance and equity in that debate. If we do not, those divisions will be exploited.
Oldham has had to literally rebuild itself and its community from the ashes of riots in which the town set itself on fire. Looking at our history, I think we can be a bit too complacent in our assumption that the malign forces might suddenly go away and we can regulate the online world better and sort out the algorithms.
By the way, we should not allow Members of Parliament to be paid by platforms for their insightful posts. Parliamentarians should, of course, post on social media, but they should post in the public interest. They should not be doing so for the financial kickback they get. I do not know whether this is the case, but they certainly should not be using paid parliamentary staff to post content online in order, ultimately, to get paid a fee through the back door on these platforms. We should all be driven by public service and by wanting to represent our constituents.
What we learned in Oldham was that every politician in every party has to take responsibility. It is the one thing that I feel we have lost in some of this debate.
I also want to reflect on David Amess. We are here reflecting on a decade passing since Jo passed away, but many of us were also affected by David being killed in his advice surgery.
My final words are not for the people in this Chamber—we speak about ourselves quite a lot. Instead, I want to thank the families of Members of Parliament for allowing their loved ones to serve in politics. I am sure that when Members set off on a Monday morning to head to this place, or when they go out on a Thursday or Friday or on the weekend in their constituencies, there will be times when their family members wonder whether the person they love will return. Our politics have to be better than that, but we should not underestimate what families who support MPs offer.
Dame Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)
Before I begin, I pay huge tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Spen Valley (Kim Leadbeater) for an absolutely outstanding speech.
It is a real privilege to take part in this debate to mark the 10th anniversary of the tragic death of our wonderful former colleague Jo Cox, with those amazing words of hers as important now as ever—words that she spoke in her first speech in Parliament, when she said that
“we are far more united and have far more in common than that which divides us.”—[Official Report, 3 June 2015; Vol. 596, c. 675.]
Those words have inspired so many initiatives up and down the country.
I want to pay tribute to the enormous amount of amazing work that Jo Cox did in her life, both before becoming an MP and in her short time here, whether it was with Oxfam, helping Syrians or in her constituency of Batley and Spen. Jo did so much in developing countries around the world, particularly to help women, and there was then the outstanding work she did with the Syrians. In her short time as an MP, she certainly made a major impact in this place: feisty, forthright, sticking to her principles, holding the Government to account, not taking no for an answer and driven by a determined optimism—she really did believe in people. She was an amazing example to us all.
I also pay tribute to David Amess, the other MP who has been murdered during my time in Parliament, who was murdered at his surgery. He was a thoroughly decent and courteous man who did so much to help others.
Next weekend—the nearest to 22 June, which was Jo Cox’s birthday—we will be commemorating in Llanelli with two events. On Friday 19 June, we will be launching the Llanelli More in Common partnership, a partnership of organisations working to bring people together, celebrate all that we have in common and help to build a stronger community where everyone has a sense of identity and belonging. It is the culmination of a lot of work on the ground, and I want to thank all those who have contributed. There are too many to name everyone, but I want to pay a special tribute to Steve Kelshaw, who has been the driving force behind it. I know that he met my hon. Friend the Member for Spen Valley at No. 10 yesterday; I thank the organisers of that event—it was such a privilege for him. What will matter now is what they do going forward, and what difference they can make and how all the partners play their part.
I would also like to extend a special thank you to Jane Hutt, who recently retired from the Welsh Senedd. In her role as Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice in the Welsh Labour Government, she was very supportive of initiatives to foster community cohesion in Llanelli, as indeed she was for many communities up and down Wales in her various ministerial roles.
On Saturday 20 June, Llanelli will be commemorating the life of Jo Cox with the Great Get Together picnic, as we have done in previous years. Of course, this year is so special because it is the 10th anniversary of Jo’s tragic murder. The Great Get Together is inspired by Jo Cox’s belief that we have more in common than that which divides us. I hope that as many people as possible will join us on the green in front of Llanelli town hall. I want to say another big thank you to all those who have organised it.
Sadly, as many colleagues have referenced, we have once again recently seen violent scenes in towns across the UK, which I utterly condemn. Violence is so destructive and counterproductive to our communities. No one should feel that they are a likely target because of their skin colour, religion or accent. Many people are living in fear, which must make us all the more determined to bring people together, absolutely shut down violence, speak up for decency and bring our communities together.
I would also like to make a special appeal for people to stop insulting and abusing trans people online—just let everybody get on with their life.
Let me turn now to another area that Jo championed: tackling loneliness. At its very extreme, we have seen some awful so-called lone-wolf mass killings—individuals who have spent long periods on their own in front of a computer screen, where powerful algorithms have fed them ever more extreme and violent material. It is so important to continue our work for safety online. That includes implementing the current legislation in full and looking to see what more can be done.
More than that, we must not let people get lonely. It is really important that people come together and that we talk, express different opinions and have a good old ding-dong. We must hear and listen to different opinions, which is why Jo’s work on loneliness remains so important. It is not just about one age group or social group; loneliness is as much a problem among younger people as older people. We are social animals. Tackling loneliness is integral to our own wellbeing as well as that of our communities. Let us make sure that Jo Cox’s legacy lives on in all that we do.
Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Stepney) (Lab)
I begin by paying tribute to my wonderful friend the hon. Member for Spen Valley (Kim Leadbeater) for her courage and determination and for constantly inspiring all of us in the work that she does in her own right and to celebrate the life and legacy of our friend and colleague, the wonderful Jo Cox.
The House has heard so much about our friend Jo as a politician, feminist, socialist, internationalist, mother, wife, sister, friend and Member of Parliament. In London, Jo lived with her wonderful family in a houseboat on the Thames, moored at Hermitage moorings in Wapping, not far from where I grew up and in the borough that is home to my constituency.
Sarah Smith (Hyndburn) (Lab)
I have similar fond memories, as I was also a member of the Tower Hamlets constituency Labour party for many years. I am sure that my hon. Friend remembers the important role Jo played there, not least because it has frankly been a difficult place to do politics for many years. Having the light of someone like Jo was so transformational for those of us who were really involved in the area all those years ago.
Rushanara Ali
My hon. Friend highlights just how much Jo meant to the people of Tower Hamlets and to our local party, along with her husband and her family. Jo and her family, as she points out, have a special place in our hearts and our diverse east end community.
I first met Jo in October 2011 when I was a newly elected Member of Parliament serving as shadow International Development Minister. Jo, Brendan and I were at a reception celebrating the work of international development leaders. Jo and her husband were among the “40 Under 40” individuals listed among a new generation of global leaders by Devex. She was standing there across the room holding her baby son in her arms while meeting and greeting those of us around her. There was an instant warmth, that big smile, and a connection that left me feeling like we were long-lost friends, when we had only just met. That was her gift.
Following Jo’s election in 2015, we would meet and talk about the conflict that was raging in Syria. I had visited Lebanon a couple of years earlier and met Syrian refugees—there was a million of them by then—who had escaped the war. By 2015, that war had raged on for a number of years. Jo was a passionate advocate for Syrian refugees, working hard to highlight the plight of all those who were suffering. Her internationalism brought together many of us who care deeply about global conflict, poverty and global emergencies. For years she worked as a board member of the Burma Campaign UK, working to support the struggle for human rights and democracy in that country.
When speaking in favour of Lord Dubs’ amendment on refugee children, Jo said,
“Syrian families are being forced to make an impossible decision: stay and face starvation, rape, persecution and death, or make a perilous journey to find sanctuary elsewhere. Who can blame desperate parents for wanting to escape the horror…? Children are being killed on their way to school…I know I would risk life and limb to get my two precious babies out of that hellhole.”—[Official Report, 25 April 2016; Vol. 608, c. 1234.]
Jo cared deeply about children around the world, as much as she loved her precious babies, as she said.
Jo also cared deeply about her constituents and her constituency. While speaking in this House and working tirelessly for her constituents, she always saw the bigger picture—the global picture. As a Member of Parliament, a humanitarian and a former aid worker, she continued to use her agency in this place to speak up for those suffering here at home and globally. Her work with Oxfam, the Gates Foundation and Save the Children shaped her politics and informed her work in this House.
Jo was an internationalist in the truest sense of the word. She was the living embodiment and definition of internationalism. She shared a belief in humanity, strong institutions, and collaboration between Governments and peoples to tackle hunger and famine and to build a more peaceful world.
We have heard in this debate and over the years the famous quote from Jo’s maiden speech on 3 June—she said that we are far more united and have far more in common with each other than that which divides us. It serves as her epitaph, and it is reflected on her coat of arms in this Chamber. We should also reflect on the words that preceded it. She said:
“Our communities have been deeply enhanced by immigration, be it of Irish Catholics across the constituency or of Muslims from Gujarat in India or from Pakistan, principally from Kashmir. While we celebrate our diversity, what surprises me time and time again as I travel around the constituency is that we are far more united and have far more in common than that which divides us.”—[Official Report, 3 June 2015; Vol. 596, c. 674-675.]
Our communities have been deeply enhanced by immigration. That was her view then, and she was right. It rings even more true now, and we must redouble that commitment to being an inclusive society when we face challenges such as those we have seen in recent days, weeks and months. Had Jo lived through these past 10 years, I am sure that her conviction would have remained undimmed. She would have taken the fight to whoever sought to sow discord and division, whether that person was from here or abroad. She would have taken on ethno-nationalism and extremism in all its forms. She would have made the case for a confident, outward-looking, tolerant and inclusive Britain, because that is who she was. That should always inspire and motivate us to speak up.
Jo’s murder as she was heading to her constituency surgery to help people who trusted her and elected her is something that affects so many of us here and across the country. Like many colleagues here, I remember that day vividly. I was in Parliament. In the minutes that passed, we hoped and prayed that she would survive. To this day—and, I suspect, for the rest of my life—I will wonder whether we could have spoken out more about the harassment, intimidation and threats towards elected representatives that some of us experience, and whether we could have warned others. Perhaps that warning might have allowed more awareness. But we will never know—I will never know.
Alison McGovern
I pay tribute to my hon. Friend and her words. She has been an incredible champion for all that she stands for in this House. I agree with all that she says.
Rushanara Ali
I thank the Minister, who knew Jo very well—much better than I did. We experience that loss deeply, but I am heartened by the work that my hon. Friend and others across this House, including in other parties, continue to do in Jo’s memory.
We must never forget that Jo was murdered by a far-right terrorist who believed in white supremacy and was obsessed with fascist and far-right groups. She was a target because she stood for everything that the far-right hates: community, understanding, compassion, love. The sad truth is that there is more anger, hostility and hate a decade on in our country. There is more disinformation, more lies, more racism, more misogyny and more hate. There are more people making money from sowing discord—monetised hatred made possible by social media algorithms and pernicious AI fakery. Deepfake content and disinformation are infecting our online space and spilling over into hate, hostility and violence on our streets. Online hate, with its real-life consequences, has cost us dearly.
Jim McMahon
In her parliamentary career, my hon. Friend has dealt with a lot of hostility and a lot of hostile actions from malign forces, and she has always risen above it. However, she should not have had to—the system should have been there to step in and intervene sooner. We talk about social media on one side, but we also need to reflect on the police. Police forces in different parts of the country approach this very differently, but I think there are two main issues. First, does my hon. Friend agree that they just think that this is all politics and they just accept it as par for the course, when it ought not to be? Secondly, they have not quite understood that online is on-street too, and that these are same people, creating the same content and making the same threats.
Rushanara Ali
What my hon. Friend says highlights the fact that when some of us entered politics—I did so in 2010—we were outliers in the hostility and harassment that parliamentarians and candidates experienced. Sadly, that is becoming increasingly mainstream. My hon. Friend has also experienced threats and intimidation. It is staggering that our system is still not fit enough to deal with those threats systematically.
One of my greatest fears is that, despite the tragedy of what has happened, lessons have not been learnt fast enough. If they had, perhaps we would not have seen further fatalities and the loss of another dear colleague, Sir David Amess. I, and I know others, do not want to see the day when yet another elected representative—a Member serving our public—finds themselves under attack. Too many have been under attack.
We must redouble our efforts to protect our democracy, and that means protecting those who stand for public office. Too many are being put off. Too many—particularly women and particularly those of colour—are being targeted and being driven from the public square and out of frontline politics because the price paid for being in politics has become increasingly difficult and costly. It is costly when it takes the form of losing our colleagues. Frankly, in the 21st century, in this democracy, I never thought that would happen.
I never thought that, and I do not think any others who came into politics at that time could have imagined a situation where our politics could have descended into the spectre of losing a dear colleague from our party and then, again, another colleague from the Conservative party. And we must not forget the far-right extremist, radicalised on the internet, who attacked my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Sir Stephen Timms) in 2010. Thankfully, he survived and is providing a great service to our nation as a Minister, but that should have raised the alarm bells then, because a number of us were on that person’s target list.
As the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Sir Andrew Mitchell) mentioned, in the past we have seen assassinations in our country. Now, however, the online space is creating an even greater threat. That is why we must ensure that Members of Parliament do not have to live with the fear of threats against their families, those who are close to them and their staff. Too many mistakes have been made, and we must ensure that we really do learn from them if we are to protect our democracy.
Catherine Fookes
I thank my hon. Friend for her incredibly moving speech. Does she agree that we must dial down the rhetoric in this place? Only last week, a male colleague of ours was punched in the face out on the street. I believe that is directly as a result of people using inflammatory language and being incredibly toxic.
In this place we do not work in the cross-party way that I think we should. Last week I visited the Swedish Parliament, which has a semi-circular chamber in which the members sit by region rather than by party. They were saying how that makes a big difference, and I was thinking, as I sit here listening to all the incredible speeches about the wonderful Jo Cox, that would it not be an incredible legacy if we did politics in a much more consensual and cross-party way?
Rushanara Ali
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. She highlights the importance of the way we work together and conduct ourselves in politics, and we have heard that in other speeches today. Sadly, that is not happening and more is required to bring parties together on as much as we can possibly agree on—to reduce the hostilities, the anger and the often-manufactured outrage online and offline, which is creating hate and hostility on our streets.
The level of threat in our politics has to be addressed. No Member should have to step out of their home wondering whether they are watching their last ever sunrise, whether the person staring at them is intent on harming them, whether they will make it home again, and whether it is their last day in this world. Too many colleagues whom I have spoken to, too often, fear for their lives. That cannot be right. That is not healthy for our democracy. That is why I am proud that this Government are working to tackle harassment and intimidation.
As a Minister, I worked on the election strategy and on the Bill that is now going through Parliament, but the situation is moving very fast. We need to redouble our efforts to tackle online hate and hostility. Incitement to violence online has to be tackled. I therefore welcome the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology’s commitment to taking action. We have to take action fast, before there are further fatalities. We see how that is spreading in the form of riots on our streets, and we see how hate and racism are spreading like wildfire, and not only against elected representatives but in wider society. We have to act quickly. We have to act together. We have to be united.
We need stronger action to ensure that we work together, as we have heard, and on civility. We need to make sure that our political discourse is about a unified country, about taking action against hostility and hatred together, and about collective action. We all have a responsibility, as citizens and as representatives, to come together to tackle hatred and the rhetoric of racism and intolerance. We need police and security services with the resources to tackle far-right extremism and terrorism, as well as other forms of extremism.
We need to ensure that we celebrate goodness and the things that bring us together. We have heard so much about the work of the Jo Cox Foundation. The annual Great Get Together reminds us of the wonderful things that we have in our country and the ability for communities from all backgrounds to come together. In my constituency, where Jo and her family have a special place in our hearts, I see the way in which diverse communities come together. We all have a responsibility to do everything we can to bring communities together.
I finish by saying how inspiring it is to see the work of my hon. Friend the Member for Spen Valley, and of course the work of her wonderful family—Jo’s children, her husband, and my hon. Friend and Jo’s parents—and all their friends. We are so inspired by all that they do for our country—for all the diverse communities that make up our great country. Jo will always live in our hearts. She will always inspire us, both in life and in death. Jo means the world to so many of us, and I will think about her in the work that I do, whether here or elsewhere.
Dawn Butler (Brent East) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Bethnal Green and Stepney (Rushanara Ali) and to have heard all the incredible speeches today. I thank my wonderful hon. Friend the Member for Spen Valley (Kim Leadbeater) for securing this debate on the legacy of Jo Cox—her sister and our friend. The debate has brought the House together in considering where we should be as a House and a society. The Opposition Members who really need to listen to this debate are not here—I do not mean the hon. Member for Brighton Pavilion (Siân Berry), who gave an amazing speech, or the hon. Member for Dewsbury and Batley (Iqbal Mohamed). There are others who sit on those Benches who we know—we are dancing around it—are the agitators of a lot of hate. That is their hallmark.
I want to talk about a sunny evening. I grabbed my karaoke machine, two microphones and a bottle of vodka, and headed to a boat party for the 2015 intake, hosted by Jo Cox in Wapping. We croaked out some amazing songs. As we drank, the songs got better and longer. I think Jo sang “I Know Him So Well”—the extended version by Elaine Paige—which I know she sang many times with her younger sister. They even had dance moves—I have seen the videos. It was an evening of joy and laughter, and I actually forgot about the awards that we gave out. It was a wonderful evening of fellowship and love. Actually, I have a confession to make, so I am glad that my right hon. Friend the Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting) is not in the Chamber: I got us a taxi there and he got me a taxi home, and I may have had to ask the driver to pull over so I could be sick. If my right hon. Friend’s Uber rating went down a bit, that may have been my responsibility. I feel like now is the time to make that confession—it just feels right.
On 16 June, as I lay on the sofa recovering from the boat party, it flashed up on the news that an MP had been stabbed. The WhatsApp group exploded. We were all thinking, “Who’s that? Who could that be?” It was unbelievable when somebody said that it was Jo—it can’t be Jo. I also thought, “How can it be Jo? We were just together.” The fact that Jo was going to her surgery on that day is a testament to who she was. She had hosted a very rowdy event, and she was determined that she would go to her surgery and do the job that she was elected to do. That is a testament to the amazing woman, advocate and politician she was.
Bernard Kenny was also stabbed as he tried to save Jo. He was a hero. In a strange coincidence, they shared the same birthday. I feel that that was a sign from the gods that they wanted Jo to be with us for a little bit longer—like her work was not finished. Bernard was given an award by the Queen; I think his wife picked it up for him. It is great to mention him, too.
Kim Leadbeater
I thank my hon. Friend for mentioning Bernard. She is right: he was an absolute hero on that day. The other bizarre coincidence was that his son, Phil Kenny, was Jo’s and my geography teacher. I have got to know Phil and his family over recent years; I put on record my thanks to them for their support.
Dawn Butler
That is incredible. These are sometimes signs and messages as opposed to coincidences, but what is not a coincidence is your kindness and the person you have been in this House. It obviously runs in the family.
We need those traits more than ever in society, because there are politicians in this House and activists in our country who are intent on sowing division. As much as we try to stop them, it sometimes feels as though we are not winning the battle. That is tough, when we know there are more better people in the world than there are bad. It is tough because the people who are fuelled by money, ego and power are getting more publicity than anybody else.
Yesterday I was on Iain Dale’s show, having an argument with a Member from the other place. He kept saying, “Social media is a voluntary contract; it shouldn’t be banned or legislated.” Well, he was completely talking out of his rear end. [Interruption.] I’m getting better. He failed to understand the real damage that social media can do. Social media is like somebody producing a hate leaflet and delivering it through someone else’s letterbox, whether they want it or not. The fact that people get rewarded and paid to do that means that they do it more often. We have to recognise that in government, and we have to we legislate. It is tough, but we have to do it. We are in a different world right now.
Iqbal Mohamed
Does the hon. Member agree that unless and until the Government take action that hits these companies where it hurts—in their profits—they will continue to do what they are doing? We set age limits on alcohol and cigarettes, and we ban heroin, crack cocaine and all that kind of stuff. This is one of those products that causes such harm.
Dawn Butler
I agree 100%: we have to hit them where it hurts. There have to be consequences. We have laws on inciting hatred in our country, and yet these companies seem to openly and flagrantly bypass them. The leader of Reform gets something like half a million or a million views whenever he posts a hate post—he is not that popular by any stretch of the imagination. It just feeds egos, and we need to legislate.
Sarah Smith
Does my hon. Friend agree that we would be wise to heed the warning of what happened in the run-up to the first world war in Germany? Fundamentally, radio was a new media then, and there was no regulation of it. Where we landed was the first world war. If we do not recognise that history is in many ways repeating itself as we stand here now, we could pay the significant and ultimate consequence for that.
Dawn Butler
In fact, we are already paying the consequences. If we do not take this issue as seriously as we should now, we cannot foresee the additional harms that will happen. The growth of the involuntary celibate movement—the underground movement that we did not really know about, but that we felt through the rise in misogyny and hate against women—was being fuelled by social media. Just because we are not a part of it, it does not mean we do not have to legislate. That is also why I feel that we have to legislate for the individual. As soon as we introduce legislation, it is out of date. We have to legislate to protect the individual—to protect our voice and our image.
I agree with the key calls from the most recent report of the Jo Cox Foundation. One is that political parties should enforce higher standards of conduct. That needs to happen, but some political parties will not care. In fact, some political parties actually recruit people who they know have violent intent and are racist, misogynistic, antisemitic, Islamophobic or homophobic. They actively go out to find them. We have to find a way to combat that.
Another of the report’s calls is that elected representatives and candidates should actively lead by example, maintaining civility during robust democratic debate. We can all take a leaf out of that book. The report also says that tech companies should do more to prevent and reduce online harms; media, digital and political literacy education should be expanded for all ages, to build greater understanding; and lastly, the Government should ensure sustained funding, police resourcing and cross-border co-ordination to protect elected representatives.
It is a sad fact that we need more protection than ever before. It is a sad fact that social media means that our speeches can sometimes be manipulated and misrepresented. The rules of the House are complex, and that can be easily manipulated for a certain agenda. It is a sad fact that that then puts us at risk in this place and outside it. A lot more needs to be done.
Jo was a great advocate for everyone—for people in Africa, for the children, for Syria. She would have hated what was happening right now in our country—she would have hated the rhetoric, and she would have been on the frontline, fighting. I want to end with a poem by a Syrian poet.
“It does not matter that I love her endlessly…
She lives in a world that the devil dreams to flee…
And yet she stands strong with a smile shinning through her lips…
With a laugh musical, poetry to my ears…
She is a brave woman…gentle and free”.
May Members of this House be a little bit more like Jo.
Apsana Begum (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to speak in this debate and to follow the moving and impassioned speech made by my hon. Friend the Member for Brent East (Dawn Butler).
I want to begin by expressing my gratitude to my hon. Friend the Member for Spen Valley (Kim Leadbeater) for her deeply moving tribute and the contribution she made today, speaking about her dear sister. I also pay tribute to the work of the rest of Jo’s family, who, in the decade since her senseless and terrible murder, have been champions for celebrating her life, her legacy and her values. Jo’s principled internationalism and her humanitarian legacy are and should be a source of great pride to her loved ones. It was the singular sense of humanity and compassion that she brought to her causes which drove them forward. From refugee rights to the protection of civilians in war, her contributions were remarkable.
Jo’s work in Syria rightfully won many admirers in many countries, and we should also remember her outspoken and impassioned advocacy for the rights of the Palestinian people. After working in Gaza and the west bank with Oxfam, Jo spoke passionately in Parliament about the need for the Government to do more for humanitarian aid in Gaza, as well as for civilian protection during the 2014 Gaza war. I know that her voice has been sorely missed in this place over recent years.
I must also place on record my admiration for the work of the Jo Cox Foundation. As Members have said, the efforts of the foundation are carrying forward Jo’s mission on tackling loneliness and social isolation. The scale of loneliness in this country is a tragedy in and of itself, but the impact of this isolation on an individual’s health and wellbeing and on the fabric of our social wellbeing demands real action. The foundation’s efforts deserve recognition, and I support the campaign for a new cross-Government action plan to tackle loneliness, while noting my admiration for organisations in my constituency, including Neighbours in Poplar, for their work in bringing our communities together.
Two years ago, I participated in research undertaken by the Jo Cox Foundation for its 2024 Civility Commission report, “No place in politics: tackling abuse and intimidation”. As I stated to those at the foundation then, I have long faced a heightened risk to my own safety: serious death threats, threats to kidnap me, threats of sexual violence and threats about ripping off my hijab in public. This abuse has not relented in the years since I was first elected to this House, and I am sad to say that, despite progress being made on the representation of women in this House, I do not feel there has been sufficient progress in our country to protect elected representatives or those who are standing for election.
Despite all the initiatives on security and justice in the years since Jo’s death, politics in this country remains a dangerous and difficult environment for women. We know that elected representatives and candidates from black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds are particularly targeted for abuse. I say this knowing that Jo was absolutely passionate about achieving a 50:50 Parliament, and she was a passionate advocate for women standing for public office not only in the UK but in many different countries around the world. The constant abuse and threats of violence against women representatives and candidates represent a major obstacle that is holding us back in the UK, and we must do more.
Young people, women and survivors of domestic abuse often reach out to me and other Members of this House to say that they would like to stand for office, to take forward their lived experiences into politics, and they ask us for advice. I have to be completely frank that I now often struggle to give them that encouragement, because after many years of trying to rebuild and move on with my life, I am really aware of the physical and mental health toll on me as the post-separation harassment goes on and on.
Iqbal Mohamed
May I take this opportunity to pay tribute to the hon. Lady for her work? Before I came to this place, I did not follow many politicians, I am sorry to say, but I did follow the hon. Lady and a few like her who have always been an absolute rock and the strongest champion for the rights not just of women but of any person who has been the target of abuse or suffered at the hands of others. I wanted to put that on the record.
There are sections in this House and in the community who say that hate speech online or in person is not as important to investigate as real crimes—burglaries, violence and other crimes we have seen this week. Does the hon. Lady agree that it is not an either/or? We have to tackle all crimes across our society, and tackling hate speech will hopefully reduce the level of violent crime that we see on our streets.
Apsana Begum
I agree that we must take steps both online and offline with the same level of energy and commitment, and I thank the hon. Member for his kind words.
When Members first come to Parliament or enter politics, they know that they are ultimately taking a risk with their life, and that is not something we should have to do when we put ourselves forward for office. It is not easy for me to say that I have also contended with that scenario—perhaps I have to understand that it just comes with the job. There have been times when I have legitimately feared for my life, and that was particularly true during the last general election campaign. As I have previously informed the House, during that election the abuse and intimidation that I had long endured reached new heights. It was an election in which my abusive ex-husband stood as a candidate against me, after I had already faced several years of post-separation harassment. Even before that I had already endured a vexatious trial, and a reselection process in the Labour party, during which I experienced harassment from his associates. Alarm bells were rung by organisations in the domestic abuse sector, and representations were made on my behalf, but the situation is ongoing and unresolved. All of that has been a deeply harrowing experience that I truly do not believe any survivor of domestic abuse should be expected to endure.
I also feel a strong sense of duty and responsibility to other survivors of domestic abuse in this country, and over the years they have reached out to me, saying that they feel a strength when they see people in this House speak about their own experiences. I do not want to be a case study or a statistic sometime in the future, or for us to say that nothing could really happen in this situation, yet sometime down the line, one or two decades later, we will all look back and say, “Oh yeah—she was really failed. The system did not protect her as a survivor of domestic abuse. We are better now, but there were failings along the way.”
For that reason, along with Members across the House, I am working to try to secure better protection for candidates facing domestic violence, post-separation harassment, and hostility in the context of election campaigns. That is why I have provided testimony and participated in the work of the all-party group on women in Parliament, and given evidence to the Westminster Foundation for Democracy, which is developing a method for institutional action—MINA—to protect candidates standing in elections or those in elected office who suffer violence in politics.
Domestic abuse can affect people from all walks of life and in all forms of employment, including those of us serving in public office. All survivors should be able to have dreams and hopes, a life beyond domestic abuse, and play a role in national policy making and our democracy, just like anybody else who has not gone through those awful and horrific experiences. This is not just about me. As I have said, no survivor of domestic abuse should be prevented from standing or staying in office due to post-separation harassment.
Jess Phillips
It has been an honour and a pleasure to work with my hon. Friend over the years, and I absolutely agree with her. Does she agree that perpetrating domestic abuse or sexual violence should eliminate someone from being able to hold such office?
Apsana Begum
That is exactly the area that many of us are looking at in the Representation of the People Bill before the House, and I am grateful to my hon. Friend for her support. She has publicly said that my experiences were completely unacceptable and unjustified, and that we must all do better to ensure that no one who seeks to stand for public office or to represent their communities has to face what I have had to face. She and I both work with many organisations and activists across the tackling violence against women and girls sector. That entire movement was built on the backs of survivors who decided to do something for themselves and for others, and who became activists. Why should those people not be able to stand for office? Why should they not be policymakers? Surely that is almost a natural progression. Why should they look at situations such as mine and think to themselves, “No, I can’t do that; I can’t take it too far” because the perpetrator will target them?
It must be the duty of everyone in society, and of all political parties, to ensure that elected representatives who are survivors of domestic abuse are not exposed to further harassment in their roles. I wish to thank members of the Jo Cox Foundation, including Dr Hannah Phillips, who I have worked with, as well as Elect Her and other organisations, for their encouragement. I also thank many of my constituents who have stood and continue to stand with me throughout what I continue to endure. I am also grateful for the support of my independent domestic violence advocate, without whom I do not think I would have been able to go through many of the procedures and processes that I continue to endure, just to be heard and to ensure that the right protections are in place.
I was elected to this place three years after Jo’s tragic murder, but the impact that she had on those who had the privilege to know her is clear. I know how proud many of my constituents are to have called Jo a neighbour in Poplar and Limehouse, and once again I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Spen Valley and say how I touched I have been by her words. I hope we can try to change politics for the better, build a society with dignity at its heart, and improve safety for women and survivors of domestic abuse.
Kim Leadbeater
May I put on record how hugely impressive my hon. Friend’s bravery has been in her political journey? I hope she will agree with me and other colleagues that we need voices such as hers in public life, and we should encourage women, whatever tragedies they have been through in their own lives as victims of domestic abuse and sexual violence, because we need their voices in this place.
Apsana Begum
Absolutely—we can only be a rich and effective democracy with all voices in the debate. In this House, through the increased representation of women, we have been able to enact and make progress on policies that meet the needs of a wide range of people in our country.
It is important for us to be able to change politics for the better, to improve safety for women and survivors of domestic abuse, and increase their ability to participate in politics. I hope I may be able to play some part in that work, and I will continue to do so to honour Jo’s legacy and values.
Amanda Martin (Portsmouth North) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Spen Valley (Kim Leadbeater) not only for securing this debate, but for her tribute to her sister. I feel extremely humbled and incredibly honoured, yet also deeply sad to be speaking in this debate, and I wish to take the opportunity to reflect on the life and legacy of a woman who I never had the privilege of meeting, but whose impact continues to shape so many of us. Jo Cox’s legacy is not simply something we remember; it is something that demands action from all of us today. Jo was in every sense a Labour woman, and a fiercely compassionate internationalist, utterly determined to open the doors of public life to those who had often been shut out, and to ensure that nobody was lonely. She did not just talk about women’s leadership—she built it. Through her work with the Labour Women’s Network and beyond, she backed women to step forward, to find their voice and to lead. Many of us stand here in this House because women like Jo believed that we belong here.
I am proud to be a graduate of the Jo Cox Women in Leadership programme, which some may say is her girls’ club. Like so many others, I gained not just skills but confidence, solidarity and a network of women who supported one another, and still do. That is Jo’s transformative legacy in action. Like Jo, before coming to this place I was not a politician. I was a teacher. Although this place can be very lonely for those who have little connection to it, I felt the love of her legacy—the cups of tea, the hugs and the smiles—so to her, I want to say thank you.
At the heart of everything that Jo did was a simple but powerful belief that we have more in common than that which divides us. That is a phrase we repeat often, but it is much more—and it must be much more—than words. It must guide how we conduct politics and how we treat one another, and it should remain a challenge to us all.
It is unfortunately not shocking but now an accepted fact of political office that opponents will spread falsehoods and misleading information online and beyond in an attempt to create outrage, whip up hostility and score political points. As has been said, although robust debate is absolutely part of our democracy, targeted abuse and intimidation should never become normalised in public life. We can and should have passionate political discussion, because that is our democracy, but without resorting to personal attacks, threats or attempts to intimidate others.
Jo’s words feel especially important in a political climate where some seek to turn disagreement into division, and where fear and anger can be used as tools to win support. The day Jo was murdered, our country was in the middle of a deeply divisive political campaign. A poster carrying the words “Take Back Control” was part of the wider political landscape, and that phrase has become associated with period of intense national debate and intense hatred. As my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham West, Chadderton and Royton (Jim McMahon) so eloquently said, 10 years later we are sadly in a world that is even more divided and has even more hate.
Political disagreement is essential to democracy, but Jo’s legacy asks us to reflect on the tone that we set, the language we use and the responsibility we carry when we seek to persuade and disagree with others. We must challenge any politics that relies on blame, hostility or creating an us-and-them situation. A democracy cannot thrive when people are encouraged to see their neighbours as opponents rather than fellow neighbours and citizens. As a teacher, I often sorted out playground squabbles, which are often really difficult for children whose worlds are so tiny. I was always looking to find solutions that were respectful, because our young people are often much better at forgiveness and finding what they have in common than we are as adults.
The tragedy of Jo’s murder remains a devastating reminder that the words we use, the campaigns we run and the atmosphere we create in public life and on our streets matters. The Electoral Commission report on the 2024 general election found that 70% of candidates experienced at least one form of abuse, but women and ethnic minority candidates faced the most serious forms of abuse.
It is not just MPs who face threats and abuse. The leader of my local Labour group on Portsmouth city council, Councillor Charlotte Gerada, who is also a graduate of the Jo Cox Women in Leadership programme, was recently verbally abused during the election campaign while visibly pregnant. This is far from okay. Women in public life are being made to feel unsafe for serving their local community, and their families are often made to feel unsafe too.
It is not surprising that the Girlguiding survey found that a third of girls and young women are deterred from pursuing careers in politics because of the hostility that high-profile women face online. That should concern every single one of us, because these are not abstract statistics: they are our sisters, mothers, daughters, nieces, aunties, nans and friends. When women are targeted, abused or driven out of public life, that affects us all. Perhaps the greatest danger of a politics built on hostility is that people begin to think they are disagreeing not with human beings, who have families, hopes and fears, but with people they see as targets. We should all ask ourselves: would we speak this way if it was someone we loved on the receiving end? When women are driven out, democracy is weaker.
Jo was determined to restore civility in public life. I commend the work of the Jo Cox Foundation in carrying on her legacy and working with the Government to bring in important changes to defend our democracy. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Brent East (Dawn Butler), I ask the Government to uphold those recommendations. The changes cannot be left to the Jo Cox Foundation alone: it is on all of us—every MP, party and platform that carries political debate—because we set the tone for our country. Jo believed in lifting as we climb, and as a teacher, daughter, sister, auntie, friend and an MP, that is a responsibility that I take seriously. We cannot abandon future female leaders and let those seeking to divide and discourage win.
I have been taking encouragement from Jo. That is why in Portsmouth’s 100th year as a city, I am launching the 100 Pompey Belles award to celebrate community and actively show that we have more in common than that which divides in my city. People can nominate their Pompey Belle: the woman in their family, workplace or community who is the glue and the foundation—the queen. They are ones who quietly, sometimes loudly but always passionately, just get things done.
We must recognise the incredible work that so many inspiring women are doing across my city and this country. It is work that often goes unnoticed, yet without it much of what makes our communities thrive simply would not happen. The 100 Pompey Belles award is about celebrating the breadth of women’s contribution, from carers and campaigners to entrepreneurs and volunteers, and it is about showing the next generation that leadership takes many forms. It is about seeing and believing that there is a place for them too. It is everything that Jo Cox embodied. In the awards, I hope we can not only celebrate those giants who walk among us, but inspire the next wave of Pompey Belles to devote their lives to bettering our communities, and to be more Jo.
The question for us all today is simple: do we honour Jo Cox with words alone, or do we honour her with action? If we are serious about honouring her legacy with more than words, 10 years on we must ask ourselves: will we all call out abuse when we see it? Will we all support women to step forward and stay in public life? Will we all build a politics that is kinder, more inclusive and rooted in our shared humanity? Will we all build bridges of community, connection and common causes? For me, that is how we carry with us her life and her love, not just in what we say but in how we lead and in what we all do. We all need to proudly be more Jo Cox.
Amanda Hack (North West Leicestershire) (Lab)
It is pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth North (Amanda Martin).
This debate is exactly the legacy of Jo Cox. It is about Jo’s legacy, and every single Member who has spoken has mentioned a memory—a sparkle of Jo. I thank Jo’s sister, my hon. Friend the Member for Spen Valley (Kim Leadbeater), for her incredibly thoughtful contribution, which took strength and courage to deliver. I also pay tribute to the Minister on the way she opened the debate. The way in which she set the tone gave us the ability to say what we want to say about Jo.
I put on the record my thanks to Jo for her dedicated work on strengthening communities and advocating for everyone to be treated with respect, as we have heard so much about today. In her honour, I particularly want to talk about loneliness in our communities and why she was such an avid champion of targeting it. I hope to provide the same hope that Jo brought to Westminster with her sparkle.
Before I do that, a lot has been said about the Members of Parliament who arrived in this place at the same time as Jo, but not so much has been said about the impact of her death on our wider Labour family. I was a member of South Leicestershire Labour party at the time, and had been the 2015 general election candidate for South Leicestershire. We, like so many, were not just truly saddened but shocked by Jo’s death. It was so difficult—we just could not fathom that it could have happened. It was beyond belief.
In true South Leicestershire constituency Labour party tradition, a decision was made to honour Jo with a permanent tribute. We have a plaque and an acer tree planted in Mossdale meadows—a lovely part of South Leicestershire—to allow us to remember Jo. Of course, it bears her most famous quote from her maiden speech.
I want to give particular thanks to some members of my CLP, because out of that confusion about what had happened, action sprung into place, as often does with the people we know and trust every day. I thank Sandra Parkinson, Lord Willy Bach in the other place, Caroline Bach, Councillor Nick Brown, who is leader of Braunstone town council, and the late Councillor David Gair for their work to get the tribute to Jo firmly in place in Leicestershire. The plaque was our way of remembering Jo, but its unveiling coincided with our get-together event, at the place where we bring our community together and make sure people are okay. I have to admit that when I need a little bit of solitude and silence, I make my way to the plaque. It is a really lovely space.
Jo Cox famously said:
“I will not live in a country where thousands of people are living lonely lives, forgotten by the rest of us”.
I share that sentiment. I have been door-knocking fairly regularly throughout most of my adult life, but the post-pandemic feeling on the doorsteps was something I had not experienced before. More people than ever wanted me to come into their homes to chat. It was a really unusual experience. They were super lonely. They had felt isolation much more than they had realised. If we look at the data and information, that should not feel surprising. Roughly 7% of adults in England reported feeling lonely often or always, and that proportion remains relatively high post pandemic. On top of that, adults living with a disability are twice as likely to experience persistent loneliness.
There are also groups we often forget. New mothers often feel incredibly lonely, and those whose gender identity differs from their sex registered at birth are three times more likely to feel lonely. Loneliness is also disproportionately high among the long-term unemployed and those who are financially struggling. That is why we have to give people hope and make sure that we tackle some of the core issues in our society.
In this age, Jo’s statement that we have more in common than that which divides us is a more important reminder than ever. It is not a huge leap to say that loneliness is partly to blame for the division and anger we see today—isolation triggers people. As the Jo Cox Foundation reminds us, loneliness is linked to lower trust, reduced civic participation and increased feelings of exclusion, and that weakens community cohesion and increases vulnerability and polarisation. How can we as communities look out for one another? How can we promote community cohesion? How can we tackle loneliness?
Just on Saturday, I went to an inspirational event: Woodstock in Whitwick’s annual cheque-giving event. Social inclusion is the organisation’s main focus, and it is run exclusively by volunteers focused on giving back to their community. Alongside hosting its main annual fundraiser Woodstock—a community music festival—it holds events, including “bingo buddies” on the last Friday of every month, a free bingo session for older people, with a raffle, teas and cakes. For so many, sadly, it is the only time they get out of the house. It is such an important space in which to socialise. Our communities are the ability to unlock the answers to some of these questions. Our communities are championing each other all the time.
Woodstock in Whitwick actively looks at ways to help others, raising money throughout the year to give to those most in need in my community. For those the organisation has helped but who have lost their battle to cancer or to other trauma, it sends a hamper to the family—a little reminder that they are not alone and that they have their whole community behind them. Since 2002, Woodstock in Whitwick has have donated more than £150,000 to individual families and community groups. Most recently, it has donated to Loros, Bright Hope, Leicester Royal infirmary’s intensive care unit garden and so much more. The impact on our local community has been profound, and something we need so much more of.
I hope that through my short speech, we will understand that Jo’s legacy is not just about the sadness that we feel and the grief we have we have shared today, but about hope and the opportunity to carry Jo’s legacy forward. We can continue collectively to create a better society and be a bit more like Jo.
Dr Scott Arthur (Edinburgh South West) (Lab)
It is an honour to follow my hon. Friend the Member for North West Leicestershire (Amanda Hack) in this fantastic debate. It was great to hear the speech from my hon. Friend the Member for Spen Valley (Kim Leadbeater). The words were fantastic, but the emotion and the pride in particular she has for her sister is amazing. Ten years on from what happened, which was so awful, it is remarkable to hear so much emotion in what many have been saying. I did not know Jo, but it is great to learn so much more about her—I have to say, the debate has been much better than reading the Wikipedia page last night.
All of us can remember the feeling of shock when it happened. I remember that Kezia Dugdale hastily organised a vigil in Edinburgh, in what has turned out to be my constituency, to which I took along my son and my daughter. Just a few weeks before, my daughter had voted in the Holyrood election, and I think she took the “more in common” message too far: at the vigil she told me that she had voted for the Conservative party in the election.
Dr Arthur
She has learned since then, and of course she has a fantastic Labour candidate to vote for.
Ten years on, it feels like this is the ideal time to have this debate, because of where the country finds itself. I mean that both in a positive and hopeful way and in quite a depressing way. I find myself getting quite depressed by the situation the country finds itself in.
This debate is about Jo’s legacy, and in my office I am incredibly lucky to have a small part of Jo’s legacy in Evie, an intern who works for us one day per week. She is still a student, but she is also part of the Jo Cox Women in Leadership programme, which is fantastic. She is always telling us about the amazing women she meets on that programme, without realising that she is actually one of them. When she found out about the debate, she was keen to write my speech. This is her speech, though hon. Members will be glad to hear that I will not do a Yorkshire accent.
Today—almost 10 years on from the tragedy in which Jo’s life was senselessly taken—acts as a reminder of the continued fight we face against violence towards women and girls. The testimony of some women Members of the House reminds us of the responsibility we all have to tackle that vile hatred. I have been quite reflective about that as the debate has continued. Further, no man or woman in any public office should ever fear for their safety—and neither should their family—for speaking up for what they believe in.
We are gathered here today, however, to remember much more than that tragic day; we are here to remember the incredible legacy that Jo left behind. As an ardently committed MP, Jo brought an enthusiasm and commitment to public service that we should all aspire to. She was loved by her family, her constituents and all those who had the pleasure of meeting her during her time in Parliament. We have heard that amply: hon. Members’ moving words have been testament to that.
Beyond Jo’s exceptional campaigning inside and outside this place, her unwavering commitment to confronting those who seek to divide us defined so much of her leadership—she was a leader in this place. Whether through her advocacy on the Syrian conflict or her efforts to combat racial hatred, Jo was steadfast in amplifying the voices of those most in need of being heard and, above all, in leading with compassion. I do not really know what she would make of the rhetoric we hear sometimes in this place.
I am really grateful to the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Sir Andrew Mitchell) for the points he made about overseas aid. When I was reading about Jo last night on Wikipedia, I drew the conclusion that she would be a little bit concerned about the cut. Because I did not know her, I did not want to put words in her mouth, but the right hon. Gentleman did know her, so I am really glad that he made that point.
I was visiting Bonaly primary school last week, and the young people there raised that cut with me. I am guilty of saying to them that I was not happy with it, but there has not been too much of a pushback against it in this place. However, in reflecting on that today, I think that is perhaps because I have not been pushing back enough on it. There is a lesson there.
Both internationally, through her work with Oxfam and Amnesty International, and in Parliament, where she helped to establish the friends of Syria APPG, Jo made a profound impact that continues to resonate today. It is deeply moving that her values of co-operation, justice and humanitarianism live on through the Jo Cox Foundation, which we have heard about. Its vital work carries forward Jo’s vision of a fairer and more united world—one in which there is no place for hatred.
The Jo Cox Women in Leadership programme empowers the next generation of women leaders across the Labour movement, ensuring that Jo’s astounding commitment to public service continues to shape the future of the party. I started off by talking about Evie, who is a real leader in her office. She is a very modest person, but she has shown leadership outside the office, such as in the students’ union at Edinburgh University. She has also just been elected as the vice-chair of Scottish Labour Students, which is fantastic.
Eleven years ago, Jo said in this Chamber that we have
“far more in common than that which divides us.”—[Official Report, 3 June 2015; Vol. 596, c. 675.]
Those words are more important than ever, and we must hold Jo’s message close to our hearts. It is fitting that we hold this debate in her honour, but the greatest tribute we can pay is to continue to stand against the hatred and division that tragically took her life. In doing so, we keep faith with Jo’s belief in a kinder and more united society.
One of the most powerful elements of this debate is the fact that we are all so concerned about the tensions, if I can put it that way, in communities right across the UK. We are all united in trying to tackle them. On that positive and hopeful note, I will finish.
Emily Darlington (Milton Keynes Central) (Lab)
It has been an absolute privilege to be in the House today and to listen to everybody’s personal reflections on Jo’s time here and on how they have been impacted.
I want to talk about Jo as a friend of mine for years and years. We met in the Labour movement, and we kept finding ourselves in the same meetings—ones that focused on international development, but, most of all, meetings that focused on women. In fact, we became closest and bonded the most when we both became pregnant at the same time.
Let me talk about the time when we were all processing having lost the 2010 election. Jo and I have always been people of action, and we have not been shy in coming forward; we both have that very much in common. I had started my own business, and she came barrelling into the office one day and said, “How are we going to organise? We cannot live like this. It is awful.” The solution, as is most often the case, was women.
We hatched a plan on how we would revitalise Labour Women’s Network and ensure that Jo took over as chair. I then stood up out of my chair and, at three months’ pregnant, I already had an enormous bump. She said, “You’re pregnant! That is so exciting—so am I. How pregnant are you?” I said, “Three months. How pregnant are you?” She said, “Three months too.” You would not know it. She was this tiny little thing with a perfectly flat belly, and I thought, “That is three months’ pregnant, and I already look like this!”
Our plan for Jo to take over as chair of LWN was very successful, and that success continues. What she was committed to bringing back to the Labour movement—what we organised and committed to—was hope. She brought a way of rebuilding our movement after that loss and a way of ensuring that women were at the heart of that.
Not long after that, we both gave birth. I looked enormous, like a beached whale, and I gave birth to an 8 lb baby. Jo was tiny throughout, and she gave birth to a 10 lb baby—I do not know where she put that baby in her small little body, but oh my goodness! Still then, we were at meetings and we were determined to breastfeed at party conference, because, frankly, the thing that both our children had in common was that they were veracious eaters—
Emily Darlington
As are mine, and they were only a few days apart.
The other thing we did was bring together our two NCT groups and try to radicalise them to the Labour cause—some more successfully than others. We dragged them to LWN fundraisers. We ended up organising many women with their babies and their buggies coming on to the Terrace of the House of Commons. We were determined that these women who we had bonded with so much in our pregnancies—the time, and then the feeding, the burping and the sleepless nights—were going to become part of our revolution.
We were both behind-the-scenes women; we liked to work and build up other people. But in the run-up to the 2015 election, we called each other back and forth, asking, “Are we going to do this? Are we going to stand in this election?” We had asked everybody else to stand, because that is what we do, and finally we asked each other and said, “Look, I’ll do it if you do it,” because we were not confident. We were confident in other women; we could see all those qualities in other women, but we were not confident that we were the ones to take that forward. That is such a woman thing to do—we look at others and see all their amazing characteristics and abilities, but we struggle sometimes to see them in ourselves.
We made a pledge to each other that we would stand in the 2015 election—she in Batley and Spen, and me in what was Milton Keynes North at the time. We would check in with each other regularly. We were each other’s secret lifeline, in this world in which we had encouraged other women to go where we had never been before.
After that election, Jo won and became the MP for Batley and Spen, and I went off to Kenya, because I thought, as you do, “If I can’t make a difference here, I can go and make a difference elsewhere.” We had completely swapped paths: she had spent time in Kenya while I was a special adviser in the Labour Government, and now she was representing our views and ideals here and I had gone off to Kenya to see what I could do. Everywhere I went, people would say, “Oh, you’re from the UK—do you know Jo?” I would proudly say, “Of course I know Jo. She’s my friend. She’s doing an amazing job in the House of Commons.”
I fell pregnant again when I was out there—Jo had already had her second child—and one day I got a phone call from a mutual friend of ours who was also in Kenya, and he asked me, “Have you heard the news?” I literally had to sit down because I thought, “I’m going to collapse, and this baby is going to get squished. I need to sit down and take this in.” I just could not believe it. Because so many people in Kenya knew that I had known Jo, I was inundated with messages saying, “What are we going to do?” None of them said, “Isn’t it so sad?” They said, “What are we going to do?” That is so Jo.
The high commissioner in Kenya gave us his property for an evening, so the first thing we did was hold a reception event in remembrance and celebration of Jo, simultaneously with the one being held in London. There remains a book of remembrance at the high commission in Kenya of all the people whose lives she touched in Kenya across those many institutions, charities and other places, and some people who just knew about her but had been inspired to come.
Not long after that, Brendan reached out to me and to other friends of his and Jo’s in Kenya, saying, “Look, it’s become too much for myself and the kids in the UK, and we can’t get a break because of all the media focus. Can we come out and spend some time with you guys?” I very much understood that our job in that situation was to surround those two amazing children with joy, so we spent a lot of time driving around, singing musicals at the top of our lungs—it is a shared passion between our two families, and her children and my children knew all the words. We brought them to see the tree that the children had planted in Karura forest in memory of Jo. For those who do not know Karura forest, it is the forest that is right in the middle of Nairobi, and that tree stands there today.
Now I am in Parliament. I sit on the Government Benches every day and, because of the strangeness of this place, we now look at Jo’s crest every day. She is a constant reminder. I do not know if anybody else is like this, but I have a series of amazing women in my life who have passed and with whom I have conversations, whether it is my grandmother, my mother-in-law or Jo. I think, “What would that conversation be? What would they say?” The conversation I have with Jo is, “How do you raise children and protect them when you are a Member of Parliament?” You try to laugh off your home security and your personal security; you make jokes about them. Sometimes you go to events with them, so you have this guy with these big guns—big muscles—walking along with you. The children ask, “Who’s this?” So you say, “Oh, it’s just a friend of mine.” “Do you know his name?” “No, but he’s a friend of mine, and he’s going to follow us around as we go to an event in the constituency together.”
I think, “What would Jo think of where we are today?” We talked a lot about how women of all backgrounds needed to be in this place, because it was the only way we were going to make our politics better. That is something that so many of us have fought to achieve, yet we have brought women to this place and told them, “You need to put up with the crap we are putting up with”—apologies, Madam Deputy Speaker; that was not the best language. It is everything from social media to what we do to protect our children and the fact that we cannot be as open and available as we all want to be. I get criticised all the time for not having my surgeries in the middle of an Asda, and I keep saying, “I can’t. Yes, you need an appointment; you cannot just come in and see me. You cannot just walk into my office, because of my team”—who, again, are a bunch of amazing women. What does that say about our politics? We would all love to be more open and inclusive. We would all love to feel safe to pop up anywhere in our constituency, but we cannot. It goes against everything that Jo and I believed a good MP—a good public servant—should be, and I struggle with it all the time.
I think Jo would love Milton Keynes, not just because we are quirky and weird, and she was a bit quirky and weird—we have new technology delivering groceries—but because we are a city that is not afraid to stand up and say that diversity is our strength. Diversity is what makes us the capital of innovation in this country. Diversity is something we celebrate throughout the summer, with festivals for diaspora communities, and everybody is included. We will be doing the MK Great Get Together. It is a picnic where everyone is invited. Bring a blanket; if you can bring food, bring food. If you have enough to bring food for others, bring food to share with others. Share the best cooking from your mum, share the best cooking that you know from your communities, and let us come together and celebrate our amazing city of Milton Keynes.
I want to finish with the fact that I knew Jo best as a mum, and I want her to know that while her legacy lives on in so many places, it also lives on in our joint NCT groups that have come together. We continue to have girls’ nights out and girls’ weekends away. The dads have a beer club, but they are not as good at organising themselves. We still have joint birthday parties. We still go away at Whitsun recess to a Eurocamp somewhere. Her voice and her memory are never forgotten in those spaces. Inevitably, as we are sitting there as a bunch of mums drinking wine, her name comes up. Inevitably something triggers it—it could be about anything. She was a brilliant mum, and she did what all brilliant mums do, which is to try to be an example to their children and to be supportive of all the other mums.
Faye, Tracey, Karin, Sarah, Hannah and Claire and others from our NCT group asked me to say this on their behalf: her passion brought people together, not just in the country, but as mums. Her sense of community and of cohesion that she expounded is why her death felt even more traumatic. I want to thank her sister and my friend, my hon. Friend the Member for Spen Valley (Kim Leadbeater), for always letting us remember Jo with positivity, not anger, and with a gumption to go. That does not mean we are all going to do a run with my hon. Friend. [Laughter.] God knows what your parents fed you for breakfast, but whatever it was, it should be in those free breakfast clubs that we have across the country, because boy are you two amazing. You are supporting us to be the amazing MPs that we can be, and we are all supporting that next generation to say, “This is not what politics is about. This is not what our country is about.” We are better than this, because we are more united and we have more in common than that which divides us.
Sarah Smith (Hyndburn) (Lab)
It is an incredible honour to speak today in this debate on the life and legacy of Jo Cox, and particularly challenging to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes Central (Emily Darlington) and her incredibly moving words. It just makes those of us who were not Jo’s best friends incredibly jealous. We all can recognise that close sisterhood that we have with our closest friends. Like everyone else, I put on record my thanks to my hon. Friend the Member for Spen Valley (Kim Leadbeater) not just for securing today’s debate, but for the amazing, wonderful sister that she is. I thank her for how she has welcomed in later intakes of MPs and, as somebody who came to the House in 2024, the latest intake of MPs in particular.
Legacy is often a concept that it is hard to distinguish, but with Jo, her legacy is tangible because of how she chose to conduct herself and lead her life. It has had a lasting impact not just on this place, as we have heard today, but in our communities up and down the country and around the globe. I will never forget the first constituency Labour party event I attended. Fortunately, it was not a CLP meeting on a Friday night, because perhaps I would not have gone back. [Laughter.] It was an event for women that Jo hosted on her boat before she was elected. True to who she was, it provided an inclusive, empowering and welcoming space for women like me who were just seeking to understand how we could bring change to our communities. Today, more than ever, we need to be the change by creating those spaces, when so much in the political discourse is desperately seeking to intimidate and put off women and minority groups.
Jo lived by the words she expressed in her maiden speech that we have heard so often today, that
“we are far more united and have far more in common than that which divides us.”—[Official Report, 3 June 2015; Vol. 596, c. 675.]
It can be hard to hold on to that truth, given the division and vitriol we have seen expressed on our streets, in our media and online, but hold on to it we must as forces seek to polarise us further away from each other in a most un-British way.
Like Jo’s constituency of Batley and Spen, Hyndburn is a diverse community with a significant number of people who come from, or who still have connections with, Kashmir. It is made up of a number of towns, but it is a place where people often feel ignored and forgotten, and where the simple blaming of others can be a tempting answer to the far more complex questions that we know our society faces. In many ways we are more connected than we have ever been but, just as profoundly, we are more disconnected than ever before. An Office for National Statistics survey in 2025 found that about 40% of 16 to 29-year-olds have felt lonely at times—and that is while they supposedly have the world in their back pockets or in their hands.
I believe that the sense of feeling alone has increased. For connection to bring people together, heal mistrust, clean up untruths, and identify the commonalities and common purpose between people and groups, it must be grounded in relationships, which the online world does not enable well. People hide behind a keyboard or anonymity and say things that cause a huge amount of hurt and harm, while bots and algorithms push misinformation and disinformation, with no regard for facts. Owing to the growth of social media, everyone can now be publishers; we can share our opinions from behind a keyboard, even opinions that we do not truly believe. With the development of AI, we can also all be producers. However, unity and authentic cohesion are built on listening, engaging, breaking bread together and enjoying being with each other. Much of how we communicate and trust our fellow human beings is by being there in person and showing up, to understand our differences and find our common ground.
As MPs, we all know that community can and will be messy, but it is wonderfully messy, as people from all walks of life come together and find out that, against all the evidence to the contrary—perpetuated online and through the media—our hopes, values and convictions are often similar, if not just the same. Community is where disagreements can be resolved through respectful dialogue. A healthy society and democracy depend on our ability to bridge differences, find common ground and move forward together rather than apart, but too often we see disagreements framed as moral conflicts that demand that people choose sides—all or nothing. This kind of polarisation pushes us into opposing camps, and makes it harder to recognise our shared values and aspirations.
A recent report by Hope not Hate found that the far right is seeking to engage young people, particularly boys and young men, by using platform algorithms to guide them towards increasingly insular spaces where extremist views are reinforced and intensified. The same approach exists on the far left, often targeting young women and girls. This is perpetuating a sense of polarisation on moral grounds, and targeting people who are actually just desperate for a sense of belonging and an understanding of this world. Online harm is a real threat, with nearly three quarters of my constituents recognising that boys and girls are being subjected to different forms of online harm. Tech companies must do more to protect our young people and our older people, and I urge the Government to be bold and brave in making sure that they do what is required of them, both morally and legally.
Since I became an MP, I have been supporting my constituent Debbie Duncan following the tragic death of her son Jay while he was on holiday in Tenerife. Since those heartbreaking events, Debbie has been hounded by what we have termed “tragedy trollers”—content creators seeking to capitalise on her grief by promoting disinformation, conspiracy theories and actual threats of violence. This has caused harm while Debbie has been navigating the worst nightmare that any parent can face. We must tackle the assumption that anyone is fair game online, especially those serving in public life, but Debbie did not ask for any public attention, let alone the limelight. She is now bravely campaigning for action to be taken against the trolls and the platforms to ensure that no family have to face this sort of abuse at the worst moment of their lives.
My hon. Friend the Member for Spen Valley and Jo’s wider family also faced that type of abuse following Jo’s death. It is unforgivable and morally indefensible. I hope that the Government will take action on this and the wider issue of misinformation, because the risk that the rise in misinformation poses to our communities and to our democracy cannot be ignored. We must all choose to confront the climate of hostility, division and malevolence that allows this online practice to fester, which also falsely claims to offer our young people a sense of belonging or empowerment.
If there is a key lesson we can take from Jo’s life, and there are of course many, it is that hope is not passive. It is something we build through action, service and our commitment to one another. At a time when forces seek to divide us, we must honour her legacy not simply by remembering her words, but by living them—choosing dialogue over hostility, community over isolation and common purpose over division. She believed that a fairer, kinder, more tolerant world was possible, and the most fitting tribute is to ensure that both our words and our actions take us closer to that reality.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
That brings us to the Front-Bench winding-up speeches.
Sir Andrew Mitchell
With the leave of the House, let me say that this has been an interesting, important and at times very moving debate commemorating the life, causes and work of our great friend—and hon. Friend—Jo Cox, as we think about how we take forward her work and her inspiration. There have been many great speeches, with some very consistent warnings, themes and concerns, as well as important agendas that all of us should be pursuing.
I will start, if I may, with the speech by the hon. Member for Spen Valley (Kim Leadbeater). She reminded us that, as well as a politician and a figure in public life, her sister was a mother of a brilliant family—she was a daughter, sister and a mother. We remember today how much that family has suffered, and how much they have contributed to our country as her legacy. It was so good to hear the hon. Lady’s news about Jo’s children, Cuillin and Lejla. The hon. Lady made a superb speech, which really placed this debate in the position in which it needed to be.
The hon. Member for Mid Dunbartonshire (Susan Murray) underlined the importance of the work tackling loneliness. My constituency neighbour the hon. Member for Birmingham Yardley (Jess Phillips) brought Brummie good sense to the debate. We always enjoy her contributions in the royal town of Sutton Coldfield. She set out the importance of friendship and family, and above all the importance of political courage. The hon. Member for Brighton Pavilion (Siân Berry) spoke eloquently about Jo’s leadership on the huge value of building united communities.
The right hon. Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting) made an uplifting speech. I have no doubt it will be carefully parsed with particular interest by his Whips Office. He spoke up for “more in common”, emphasising that it does not mean we all have to agree, but that it is important we know how to disagree in the appropriate manner. He made the point, far better than me, that although the media focus on our divisions in this place, there is an awful lot of harmony, agreement and close working together, which does indeed get things done.
The hon. Member for Dewsbury and Batley (Iqbal Mohamed) emphasised the importance of confronting reckless and inflammatory language, and those who enable it to be spread. That most important point recurred a number of times during the debate. The hon. Member for Neath and Swansea East (Carolyn Harris) called for more people like Jo, and she made a lovely speech. The hon. Member for Oldham West, Chadderton and Royton (Jim McMahon) emphasised the importance of simple courtesy and much more, both in the House and in politics outside it.
The hon. Member for Llanelli (Dame Nia Griffith) made an important speech about the need to focus on online safety and on tackling loneliness. I thank her and others for their very nice comments about our friend and colleague Sir David Amess.
The hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Stepney (Rushanara Ali), who has made such a contribution to cross-party work on international development, made a most important point that the sheer personal cost of coming into politics and Parliament today, particularly for women, has risen hugely. As parliamentarians, to protect future generations and ensure their interest, commitment and ambition, we, too, need to focus on that in our time.
The hon. Member for Brent East (Dawn Butler) entertained the House with her drinking stories. [Laughter.] We are all relieved to see that she managed to get home in the taxi kindly arranged by the right hon. Member for Ilford North.
Wes Streeting
I finally understand why my rating is slightly below five stars!
Sir Andrew Mitchell
The House will have heard the right hon. Gentleman’s comments.
The hon. Member for Brent East spoke about her work doing battle on the radio show of the excellent Iain Dale, the highly respected broadcaster, against the evil side of social media. We should all thank her for that.
The hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Apsana Begum), in a most important contribution, spoke about the excellent work on projects she had done with the Jo Cox Foundation. She told us of the appalling abuse she has faced which, on behalf of His Majesty’s Opposition, I condemn in the strongest possible terms today from the Dispatch Box. Across the House, we salute her bravery.
The hon. Member for Portsmouth North (Amanda Martin) talked about the Jo Cox Foundation, the Jo Cox Women in Leadership programme, the agenda for change and the need for all of us to stand against targeted abuse, threats and hatred. She reminded the House of the horrific level of threats faced by candidates in the 2024 general election, giving the House the independent figures that have been collated. Collectively, we must ensure that that is never allowed to happen again.
The hon. Member for North West Leicestershire (Amanda Hack) talked compellingly about the work of the Jo Cox Foundation, its impact in her constituency, and the importance of continuing to build on that locally. The hon. Member for Edinburgh South West (Dr Arthur) revealed the diversity of political views, at least at one time, in the Arthur family—something the Mitchell family would recognise. He said that there had not been much push-back in this place on the international development cuts. I invite him to join me and others across the House in campaigning to change that, in the certain knowledge that Jo Cox would have thoroughly approved of our taking up that cause with very great vigour. She would have been delighted that we had done so.
The hon. Member for Milton Keynes Central (Emily Darlington) entertained the House with stories of her and Jo’s pregnancies, their work together as mums, and her efforts to make the House more friendly to mums and children. I must tell the House that back in 1988 it was me and the then Member for Chelmsford, Simon Burns, who finally persuaded the House authorities to allow two high chairs to be placed in the cafeteria downstairs—what was then called the Strangers cafeteria —so that we could bring our children in for tea once a week on a Tuesday.
Finally, the hon. Member for Hyndburn (Sarah Smith) talked about the force of Jo’s legacy because of the example she set and the way in which she conducted herself. The hon. Lady made the interesting point that we are both more connected and more disconnected than ever before. She talked of the hurt so often caused by keyboard warriors who behave in a way that they never would if they were held to account.
It is my pleasure to add my voice, on behalf of the Opposition, to the important points and to the spirit of unity and community that have characterised this excellent debate.
Alison McGovern
With the leave of the House, I will close the debate on behalf of the Government.
Before I respond to the points that have been made, I just want to make one very brief point, which is to thank all those who participated in the Speaker’s Conference on security. If I may, Madam Deputy Speaker, I would also like to put on the record, perhaps on behalf of all of us, our thanks to all those who participate in Operation Bridger to keep Members of Parliament safe, and to all those who look after us on the estate. On the way into this debate, I spoke to a few of the Doorkeepers who looked after us in the days after Jo was killed. I know that they will be thinking about this day with as much poignancy as all of us in the Chamber, so I put on the record my thanks on behalf of the Government. I also agree with colleagues who said that today we are thinking of Sir David Amess’s family, the difference Sir David made across this House, and the great parliamentarian that he was.
I thank all Members who have contributed to the debate, not least my friend, the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Sir Andrew Mitchell)—the royal town of Sutton Coldfield, as I have learnt to call it. [Interruption.] I missed a west midlands joke there. The right hon. Member and I worked together after Jo was murdered and have done so since. With his participation in the debate today, he has truly earnt his stripes as an honorary sister. I was particularly taken by his addition of highchairs to the cafeteria, which we all welcome.
David Taylor (Hemel Hempstead) (Lab)
I want to put on record my appreciation for the incredible work that Jo did for the people of Syria, and for the incredible work that the Minister and the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Sir Andrew Mitchell) did after she was murdered. They took forward that cause at a moment when they were both experiencing the great grief of Jo’s murder. The Syrian people are grateful for the work that Jo did, and that they continued to do, during that very difficult period.
Alison McGovern
I truly thank my hon. Friend and agree with what he said about the importance of that issue.
Of course, we must all thank my hon. Friend the Member for Spen Valley (Kim Leadbeater). Words do not feel enough to describe the manner in which she has carried her sister’s legacy forward. She has made this House a far better place than it ever could have been without her, and I hope that she has felt the love today.
The hon. Member for Mid Dunbartonshire (Susan Murray) talked about community, as so many others did. My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Yardley (Jess Phillips) nearly got away with making a speech without dropping herself in it, and talked most powerfully about friendship and the loneliness that we feel, to which Jo was a singular antidote. I thank my hon. Friend for that and for her friendship.
I was glad that the hon. Member for Brighton Pavilion (Siân Berry) spoke about her predecessor, and I know that she is carrying forward the work of Caroline Lucas in that same spirit. My right hon. Friend the Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting) talked about our country, and I am glad that he did, but he also mentioned for the first time his personal experience of losing Jo. It is important that we are able in our grief to recognise that part of that grief comes from love, and the love that we have for each other. It is okay to talk about that.
The hon. Member for Dewsbury and Batley (Iqbal Mohamed) talked about being a good parliamentarian, which is important for us all. My hon. Friend the Member for Neath and Swansea East (Carolyn Harris) talked about the 2015 intake—as a 2010-er, I now feel like I missed out. My hon. Friend the Member for Oldham West, Chadderton and Royton (Jim McMahon) is another 2015-er; I have never felt more disappointed to have been elected five years earlier. My hon. Friend the Member for Llanelli (Dame Nia Griffith) talked about the Great Llanelli Get Together, which sounds wonderful.
My fellow 2010-er, my hon. Friend the Member for Bethnal Green and Stepney (Rushanara Ali), knows about the subject of this debate more than most, and I am proud of her today, as I am every single day. My hon. Friend the Member for Brent East (Dawn Butler): respect—that’s all I can say. We all support my hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Apsana Begum) and the way she speaks up. I agree with so much of what she said.
My hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth North (Amanda Martin) told the House about the Pompey Belles, which I am excited about. My hon. Friend the Member for North West Leicestershire (Amanda Hack) sounds like she has done amazing things on loneliness in Leicestershire. I ask my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South West (Dr Arthur) to please give Evie my best; it was a cracking speech—well done.
It was wonderful to hear my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes Central (Emily Darlington) tell her story of friendship with Jo. I know that Jo’s legacy is not just here in this country but in around every corner around the world, and it is wonderful to hear that. My hon. Friend the Member for Hyndburn (Sarah Smith) also showed just what an impact Jo had in every way on bringing women forward in our politics. Through all the contributions today, we have heard about the length, breadth and depth of Jo’s legacy, and why we need it now.
I want to make just make one slightly party political point and say that I am sorry Jo was not here with us to see this Labour Government elected, because although much of today’s debate has been cross-party in spirit—and rightly so—Jo was Labour to her core. Her love and determination is in all her friends on the Labour Benches. A feisty feminist, she was the first elected chair of the Labour Women’s Network. She would have been so proud of all the graduates of the Jo Cox Women in Leadership programme, of whom there are 18 in the House—I will not name them all for reasons of time, but they are an incredibly impressive girl gang, and I would not mess with any of them.
I like to think that Jo would have approved of our work to stop violence against women and girls. As a campaigner for children, and having spoken in the House about her educational attainment in her Yorkshire home, I suspect she would also have liked free school meals, new playgrounds, our investment in schools and the child poverty strategy, which will lift half a million children out of poverty.
I want to relay some words from the Foreign Secretary. Thinking of Jo as a West Yorkshire neighbour and friend, she recalls that Jo was a true force of nature who radiated purpose and determination and took sheer delight in the joy of life, which is why it is so devastating that she lost her life so young. Our first female Chancellor of the Exchequer added that it falls on all our shoulders to take forward Jo’s work, as she said in the Chamber after Jo died, and we have—most of all my hon. Friend the Member for Spen Valley.
What Jo might have made of the fact that my party is yet to elect a woman as its leader, I cannot say. She was a proud trade union member and would have relished voting for new rights at work along with the rest of us.
On 16 June 2026, next week, it will be 10 years since Jo Cox was murdered in her constituency. We all remember her words, which are forever etched on the wall of the Chamber, just below her coat of arms, which is to the left of the Speaker’s Chair; designed by her children, it features intertwined Yorkshire and Lancashire roses, a mountain and the colours of the women’s suffrage movement. The words underneath, “More in Common”, have become a political movement among all of us who believe that the idea of community comes from our values, and not where we happen to be born or what we happen to believe.
At this moment, when some politicians are stirring division and hate, Jo’s legacy has never been more important. In the aftermath of her killing, people were inspired by not just what Jo did, but how she did it. She recognised that the curse of loneliness unites us all, because it could happen to us all, and saw the value in physical activity that would provide a language and connection however different people thought they were. Her activism for Syrian civilians united and corralled people of all political persuasions and none, because there is nothing more obvious and uniting than the fact that children made homeless by falling bombs should have a roof over their heads. Ten years after she was murdered, this type of politics has never been needed more.
If democracy is to succeed at all, it must be on the basis that it is for everyone. Stirring up fear tells people that politics is just for the powerful—just for those who can tolerate abuse or worse. That is not democracy; it is politics by intimidation, and it is the law of the bully.
Ten years after Jo was murdered, “More in Common” cannot just be words on the Chamber wall. It must be the operating principle for all of us who want to sit in the House of Commons. It is the standard to which we hold ourselves, not just a nice idea.
Ten years have passed, but in that time the case for Jo’s arguments has only strengthened. We desperately need people in every part of the UK to feel a part of their community. The hateful rhetoric that is now rife can be stopped only with a proud campaign inspired by Jo and all she stood for—to support our diversity and the idea that we are all equally part of our country, deserving to be heard.
That campaign is this. First, do not hate. No one needs to hate anybody. As my hon. Friend the Member for Spen Valley told us earlier, as they say in Yorkshire, “If you can’t say anything good, keep your gob shut.” Secondly, be a neighbour. Go to the coffee morning, volunteer, join the sports team.
Thirdly, be brave. I am different from Jo. She was the life and soul of the party, but I am the one in the kitchen talking about econometrics. I never felt, when faced with a challenge, her instinctive ability to just say yes and go for it. As my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Yardley reminded me this morning, it is about jumping in at the deep end and finding the shallows afterwards. I learned from Jo to be brave—that’s how you get things done in politics.
The fourth part of the campaign has to be for all of us to fight for our country. The United Kingdom is full of wonderful and good people. They need homes and jobs, and they need some joy in life. They do not need bitterness and hate. They need Jo’s love. If there is a fight to be had in this country, it is a fight for that. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear!”]
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered the legacy of Jo Cox.
Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Today an honourable man has resigned, on a matter of principle, from a Government in disarray. The former Defence Secretary, as he now is, has resigned over the Government’s continuous failure to publish the defence investment plan or even to fund it. In his letter to the Prime Minister he said,
“your DIP financial settlement—which I was first given in full on Monday afternoon this week—falls well short of what is required for defence and the country at this dangerous time…it rises to just 2.68% of GDP in 2030”.
That is four years from now.
We have a war in Ukraine, continued instability in the middle east and a Department in total limbo. The man with day-to-day responsibility for overseeing the nation’s defence has just quit. Madam Deputy Speaker, have you been given any indication that the Government will come to the House before we rise at the conclusion of business today and make a statement on this chaotic situation and who is now in charge of the Ministry of Defence? Similarly, have you been given any indication as to when the Government will now finally, at last, publish the defence investment plan, which is essential for the security of this country? As the first duty of the Government, above all others, is the defence of the realm, they must surely come to the House in the next few hours and explain how this dreadful situation will somehow be rectified.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for giving notice of his point of order. I have not been informed that the Government wish to make a statement on this matter or on the timetable for the publication of the defence investment plan, but those on the Government Front Bench will have noted what the right hon. Gentleman said.
Victoria Collins (Harpenden and Berkhamsted) (LD)
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Can I first put on the record my appreciation of the heartfelt contributions about Jo Cox today?
Madam Deputy Speaker, I would like to highlight the case of Rasika, who is a care worker serving our community, and his wife Chamila, who is a teaching assistant in Northchurch who helps children with special educational needs and volunteers at the local church. They have built a life in my constituency for four years. They have done everything right, yet the Home Office told them and their three young children that they must return to Sri Lanka within 14 days.
The community has rallied around them and has been in absolute disbelief, with one person saying that the family are such kind, good, intelligent and hard-working people. They are frontline workers and pillars of our community, and I am horrified that this is the Britain they know and that they do not feel welcome. I have written to the Immigration Minister, but I would like advice on how I can secure urgent action from the Minister and the Home Office to reassure this family and find a resolution for their case and for the many others who may face the same situation.
Madam Deputy Speaker
I thank the hon. Member for giving notice of her point of order. Those on the Government Front Bench will have heard her point. This is not a matter for the Chair, but I suggest she consults the Table Office to explore the other mechanisms through which she can pursue the matter further.