Sue Gray Report

Debate between Boris Johnson and Rushanara Ali

Wednesday 25th May 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

No, Mr Speaker.

[Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)]

I, like many in this country, have lost loved ones. My constituents have lost loved ones. Hundreds of thousands of people have lost loved ones. The longer that this goes on the more traumatising their experience is. I can tell the Prime Minister that sitting through this statement is very traumatising for many of us who have lost loved ones and our constituents. We cannot go on like this. Will the Prime Minister now do the decent thing—the honourable thing—accept responsibility and step down so that we can all move on and get on with our lives and ensure that people who have suffered so much are protected and served properly?

[The Prime Minister]

I thank the hon. Lady. Of course I appreciate the suffering of those on whose behalf she speaks, but I do believe that it is the duty of the Government to get on as fast as we can with sorting out the priorities of the people now.

Ukraine

Debate between Boris Johnson and Rushanara Ali

Thursday 24th February 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

That is clearly the will of the House and it is the will of the Government, which is why we will be bringing forward those important measures on Monday.

[Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)]

My thoughts are with the Ukrainian people at this time. While I welcome the sanctions that the Prime Minister has announced today, can he update the House on whether he plans to sanction the major state-owned Russian banks such as Sberbank and Gazprombank and the non-state Alfa bank?

[The Prime Minister]

Yes.

Sue Gray Report

Debate between Boris Johnson and Rushanara Ali

Monday 31st January 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

What we are actually doing is cutting crime by 14% and putting 20,000 more police on the streets.

[Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)]

Week in, week out throughout the pandemic, I, like many of my colleagues, had to deal with constituents who could not see their dying relatives or grieve with their families. Some of us were directly affected when we lost family members and loved ones. The Prime Minister’s actions have made a mockery of the British people’s sacrifices during the pandemic, and now he is the subject of a criminal investigation. It is a new low for our country and it makes a mockery of our democracy to the rest of the world. If the Prime Minister takes responsibility for everything that has happened, as he has said, is it not time that he puts his party, this Parliament and the country out of their misery and steps down, so that we can move on and focus on the national interest? At the moment, that is not possible because of the crisis that he and No. 10 have created.

[The Prime Minister]

No.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Boris Johnson and Rushanara Ali

Wednesday 26th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I am delighted that my right hon. Friend has the meeting he wanted. We have already changed the law to allow doctors to prescribe cannabis products where clinically appropriate, but we are very keen to support this, provided that the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency is happy as well.

[Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)]

11. Threats and intimidation, bribery and blackmail, racism and Islamophobia: that is the character of the Prime Minister’s Government. Every day, the Prime Minister lurches from scandal to scandal. Meanwhile, his Government have written off £4.3 billion to fraudsters. Instead of writing off loans to fraudsters, why will the Prime Minister not write his resignation letter to the Queen?

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Lady talks about racism and Islamophobia. She should look at this Government; look at the modern Conservative party. We are the party of hope and opportunity for people across this country, irrespective of race or religion. We do not care what religion people affirm. All we care about is whether they are interested in ideas of aspiration and opportunity; that is what we are about.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Boris Johnson and Rushanara Ali

Wednesday 9th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is an excellent champion for his area, and if he can just contain his impatience a little bit, he may hear something to his advantage and to the advantage of his constituency from his right hon. Friend and mine, the Communities Secretary.

[Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)]

The £150 million spent on faulty masks, the £120 million spent on contracts awarded to a Tory council and the staggering £1 billion-worth of contracts awarded without proper due diligence—where has the money gone, Prime Minister?

[The Prime Minister]

All I can tell the hon. Lady is that there has been a massive investment in PPE throughout this pandemic, and billions of items have been supplied. If she has a particular anxiety about some particular contract, I am more than happy to address that if she will take the trouble to write to me.

Grenfell Tower Inquiry

Debate between Boris Johnson and Rushanara Ali

Wednesday 30th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. I am well aware that he has a centre for the training of firefighters at Moreton-in-Marsh in his constituency. Directly on his point, Sir Martin cautions all of us against making judgments at a distance, and I agree with him wholeheartedly on that.

It is very easy for us on these green Benches to have 20:20 hindsight. We are not about to run into the heart of a fire that is blazing more than 200 feet into the night sky.

[Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)]

I thank the Prime Minister for giving way. First, when he was Mayor of London he presided over fire service cuts despite warnings from London MPs from across parties, which he did not heed. Does he regret that? Secondly, on his Government’s watch, the regulators were stripped of powers, including the ombudsman’s power to investigate complaints without complainants having to go to their MP first. Will he now take action? He does not have to wait for the reports to come out to take action to strengthen the regulations. Will he provide the much-needed resources? We had to fight tooth and nail for two years with Grenfell United and the survivors to secure the £600 million. It is time that he acted and provided the necessary additional funding so that our constituents can sleep at night without having to worry about whether their homes may be set alight.

[The Prime Minister]

Sir Martin notes that appliances were at the site within five minutes, and he makes no findings that I am aware of about a lack of resources, nor about the other issues that the hon. Lady raises.

It is vital that individuals are held accountable for their errors, and when we do so we must do so very carefully. It is clear from this report that the firefighters on the ground were in a position that they should never have been in. They were doing their damnedest to tackle a fire that should never have been allowed to happen. But that does not absolve us of responsibility.

We must ensure that the failures identified by the inquiry are corrected, because not only does Sir Martin highlight that mistakes made by the London Fire Brigade in responding to Lakanal House, which the hon. Member for Easington (Grahame Morris) mentioned earlier, were repeated, he also raises concerns that the London Fire Brigade is, I am afraid,

“at risk of not learning the lessons of the Grenfell Tower fire.”

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Boris Johnson and Rushanara Ali

Tuesday 20th February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Boris Johnson]

I am delighted to tell my hon. Friend that to the best of my knowledge we have, just in the past 18 months, opened three new trade missions in North America. I cannot comment about Canada specifically, but we are certainly beefing up our presence in the United States in advance of doing a great free trade deal.

[Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)]

The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights described what is happening to the Rohingya people as a military campaign in which

“you cannot rule out the possibility that acts of genocide have been committed”.

Having met the victims in Bangladesh and Myanmar, the Foreign Secretary said earlier to my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) that a Security Council referral is too difficult. Will he show some leadership and work with our EU partners next week at the Foreign Affairs Council to build support for a referral? The act of a referral will make a difference.

[Boris Johnson]

As I am sure the hon. Lady knows, Myanmar is not signed up to the International Criminal Court, but there must be no doubt about the gravity of what has taken place. Anybody who flies over northern Rakhine, as I did last week, will see literally hundreds of villages that have been burned or destroyed. Some 680,000 people have been displaced. This has been ethnic cleansing on an industrial scale and it may also have been genocide. It is vital that the evidence is acquired to determine whether any future prosecution can be mounted.

Budget Resolutions

Debate between Boris Johnson and Rushanara Ali

Monday 13th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Boris Johnson]

I have to say that I am deeply disappointed that I finally gave way to the hon. Gentleman, because he has shown the most staggering ignorance of the British Council, of Foreign Office spending and of the success of our diplomatic network. However, I will give him the answer to his question. In response to the challenge and the opportunities that we have, we are increasing our representation: just in our European posts, 50 more diplomats and 25 new trade experts have been recruited. We are expanding a fantastic network, and that is on top of the enormous soft and hard power that we have. As I am sure the House will know, the United Kingdom is the third biggest contributor to development finance in the world, after the United States and the European Union. That is an extraordinary record, of which I think every Member in the House—certainly every member of this Conservative Government —should be proud.

[Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)]

I am glad to hear the Foreign Secretary talk about Britain’s soft power and its global reputation. Does he agree that he poses the biggest risk to both by putting his foot in his mouth on too many occasions?

[Boris Johnson]

I am terribly sorry; I missed the second half of that question. However, if the assertion was that British diplomacy is in any way falling short, let me say this. I believe that in the last few months we have seen an understanding of what the country wants, and a growing warmth towards our objectives, because they are, after all, shared with our European friends and partners.

As I have said, one of the things that are most admired by our colleagues around the table, not just in Brussels but in the United Nations, the G7 and the G20—all the bodies whose meetings I attend—is the fact that, as they realise, our Government have an extraordinary record of giving development aid. As we sit here now, the Department of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for International Development is helping the Pakistani Government to put 6 million girls through school in the Punjab alone. I think everyone appreciates that that is the best way of promoting economic growth, curbing infant mortality and reducing the pressures of a growing population.

We do not spend our aid budget—0.7% of gross national income—just because that is the right thing to do, although surely it is morally the right thing to do. I am not embarrassed to say that it is also the best way of promoting the development of the economies concerned, and thereby spurring the growth of our export markets. In that sense, a global Britain—[Interruption.] I did not think Labour Members would like that, because they are not interested in any policy that is so obviously of economic benefit to the country, but that is one of the reasons we are doing this. I speak as a defender of, and a believer in, globalisation, because millions of British people in our country—tens of millions, indeed—depend for their jobs and their livelihoods on the benign force of global free trade, which in turn requires safe and open shipping lanes, clear rules and effective institutions. None of that can be taken for granted.

US Immigration Policy

Debate between Boris Johnson and Rushanara Ali

Monday 30th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Boris Johnson]

Absolutely. I assure my hon. Friend that we will continue to be a great open society in the UK. I was very proud when I was Mayor of London that 40% of Londoners were born abroad, including me. She has repeated condemnation of the Executive order, which has been heard on both sides of the House. As I have said, it is not my place to defend or explicate that policy, but it is there for 90 days and 90 days only, and will be subject to the full scrutiny of debate on Capitol Hill. As we have heard, there is doubt there, too.

[Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)]

President Trump’s decision to issue this Executive order is deeply divisive and dangerous. It has sent shockwaves around the Muslim world, including in Muslim communities across Europe and here in this country. As a Muslim, I find it deeply worrying and disturbing. Living in this country, I am deeply fearful of reprisals like the attack in Canada. When political leaders amplify tensions, when they fail to show courage and leadership, and when they fail to stand up in the face of division and hatred, we send the wrong message. I appeal to the Foreign Secretary and the Prime Minister to show courage and leadership, and to take steps to provide protection for those communities across Europe who are feeling very, very worried about their safety after this Executive order.

[Boris Johnson]

I agree very much with a lot of what the hon. Lady says, which is why the Prime Minister and I have taken the line we have on this measure. She speaks of hate crime and is absolutely right to do so. I do not want to see anything that stigmatises, entrenches divisions or causes communities to feel unwelcome, whether in this country or elsewhere. That is absolutely wrong. We take hate crime very seriously in this country. We can be proud of some of the achievements we have made in the past 10 to 20 years in cracking down on those who foment mistrust and division between our communities.