Point of Order

Alan Whitehead Excerpts

Thursday 25th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Yesterday, during the urgent question on Bulb going into special administration, the Business Secretary told my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), after refusing to answer a question from my right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband), the shadow Business Secretary:

“There is no Government bail-out”.—[Official Report, 24 November 2021; Vol. 704, c. 358.]

Yet we learned from a court hearing on the same day, and indeed on the front page of The Daily Telegraph and other papers today, that the taxpayer is on the hook for as much as £1.7 billion as a result of this Government’s failure to properly regulate the energy market.

I ask for your guidance, Madam Deputy Speaker. Is it right and proper for a Minister to say one thing to this House and another thing to the courts? Do you have any guidance on how the Business Secretary can be brought back to this House to explain why he has misled it in his answers to yesterday’s urgent question. [Interruption.]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order. Although I am not listening to sedentary comments, I do not need to be reminded. I hope the hon. Gentleman will come back to the Dispatch Box and find other words for his last sentence. I am quite sure that no right hon. Member of this House could have misled it.

[Dr Whitehead]

Thank you for your guidance on this matter, Madam Deputy Speaker. Of course I withdraw the question of misleading the House. I hope the Business Secretary will come to the House in due course to explain his comments.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

I thank the hon. Gentleman. That is a perfectly polite and in-order question. However, it is not a point of order for the Chair, as I think he knows. Ministers are, of course, responsible for the content of their speeches and answers at the Dispatch Box, and the Chair has no control over such matters. If, however, he wishes to take the matter further and require the Secretary of State to come back to the House to revisit the matter on which he is in disagreement, I suggest that he visits the Clerks in the Table Office for advice on how he might go about that. I am also sure the Treasury Bench will have heard—

Oral Answers to Questions

Alan Whitehead Excerpts

Tuesday 12th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lidington]

We were very active in the preparation for, and at, the NATO summit in Warsaw to emphasise that our commitment to working closely with countries such as Georgia to bring them into the Euro-Atlantic family of nations continues, and I think their Governments well understand that commitment.

[Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)]

14. What recent assessment he has made of the progress of the international campaign to defeat ISIS/Daesh.

[The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr Philip Hammond)]

Significant military progress has been made in Iraq, Syria and Libya since my right hon. Friend the Defence Secretary updated the House on 24 May. Iraqi security forces have liberated Falluja. The Syrian Democratic Forces are closing in on Manbij in Syria. In Libya, Misratan forces have pushed Daesh back to the city centre in Sirte, and the Libyan national army is winning the battle against Daesh in Benghazi. We now need to see political progress in Syria, Libya and Iraq to match those military successes.

[Dr Whitehead]

What initiatives has the Secretary of State undertaken recently to ensure that the international effort concentrates on securing the defeat of Daesh, rather than of the proxies, or the allies, involved in the process?

[Mr Hammond]

The hon. Gentleman is referring, I think, to the situation in Syria, where there are two separate battles going on: the civil war between the regime and its opponents, and the battle by the international community against Daesh. We are clear, and always have been clear, that there cannot be lasting success against Daesh unless we resolve the political crisis in Syria and create a regime that is acceptable to the Sunni Muslim population of Syria, giving them an alternative to the appalling offer from Daesh.

Britain in the World

Alan Whitehead Excerpts

Monday 1st June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)]

I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby (Melanie Onn) on a superb maiden speech that will, I am sure, be echoed by important contributions in many years to come. During it, I reflected on her emphasis on the importance of renewable and sustainable energy to the economy of Grimsby. It is many years since I made my maiden speech, but over those years—the five terms for which I am grateful to the electors of Southampton, Test for returning me as a Member of Parliament—I have tried to champion that cause in this House, as well as championing the pressing need to take action on climate change. The sort of new future that could be available for Grimsby with renewable and sustainable energy at its heart is one of the positive outcomes of that championing.

In this Queen’s Speech, we saw a brief reflection of the importance of action on climate change and the need for a very firm and positive outcome to the upcoming talks in Paris in December. It is important that that was in the Queen’s Speech, because it is on our watch that these talks will take place, with an outcome that could be crucial for the whole future of our world. If there is one thing that we might want Britain to do in the world, and for the world, it is to press at the climate change talks for the conclusion that could make such a big difference.

In that context, I worry about the difference between the words that are in front of us and the actions that have to go with them. One of the key Bills proposed in the Queen’s Speech is an energy Bill that appears to point in precisely the opposite direction from the way we need to go on climate change by institutionalising the extraction of mineral energy at its maximum and taking punitive action against renewable and low-carbon energy, particularly onshore wind, which it places in the arms of a system that is already bankrupt. If the Bill has its way, there will be very little new renewable energy coming forward over the next period. That is important. Britain has a lot of money in the bank to contribute towards tackling climate change. We have to walk the walk and not just talk the talk and leave it at rhetoric.

The Government have said that the unique selling point of Britain’s contribution towards tackling climate change is the targets it has set and how it has met its carbon budgets. Indeed, we recently met our first carbon budget and have set a number of future carbon budgets, which I hope we will be able to meet. However, if we end up attending climate change talks having abandoned that particular trajectory, our influence in the world will be immeasurably diminished.

We could put in legislation the requirement to decarbonise our energy supplies by 2030. That was a grave omission from the Queen’s Speech. We could do that in the run-up to the climate change talks to demonstrate that we are serious about a future low-carbon economy. If we end up at the climate change talks dithering about whether we are going to do that and reach our future targets, our influence will be gravely diminished and our attempts at a low-carbon future will be undermined as a result.

Hazaras (Afghanistan and Pakistan)

Alan Whitehead Excerpts

Monday 1st September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)]

As my right hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr Denham) eloquently put it in his introduction to the debate, this Hazara community does not have a nation; it has parts of a nation and has had a substantial diaspora across the world, with perhaps a million Hazaras in Iran, more than half a million in Pakistan and between 1 million and 2 million in Afghanistan. These people have suffered historically from enormous persecution, which in many ways continues today.

If I have time, I would like briefly to read out a letter that was circulated in Quetta at the time of the arrest of a leader of the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, a body that continues openly to pursue attacks against Hazaras in Quetta and around. The letter says:

“All Shi’ites are worthy of killing. We will rid Pakistan of unclean people. Pakistan means land of the pure and the Shi’ites have no right to live in this country. We have the edict and signatures of revered scholars, declaring Shi’ites infidels. Just as our fighters have waged a successful jihad against the Shi’ite Hazaras in Afghanistan, our mission in Pakistan is the abolition of this impure sect and its followers from every city, every village, and every nook and corner of Pakistan.

As in the past, our successful jihad against the Hazaras in Pakistan and, in particular, in Quetta, is ongoing and will continue in the future. We will make Pakistan the graveyard of the Shi’ite Hazaras and their houses will be destroyed by bombs and suicide bombers. We will only rest when we are able to fly the flag of true Islam on this land of the pure. Jihad against the Shi’ite Hazaras has now become our duty.”

That organisation is dedicated to eradicating an entire ethnic group from the face of the earth. Those are the circumstances under which the Pakistani Hazaras live daily, with the results that my right hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen described.

There have been atrocities—for example, when a number of people were blown up on a bus while on a pilgrimage. When asked how he intended to “stem the tears” of the Hazara community, the then Chief Minister of Balochistan said:

“Of the millions who live in Balochistan, 40 dead in Mastung is not a big deal. I will send a truckload of tissue papers to the bereaved families.”

That is the reality of life for Hazaras in Pakistan and in other places. It is incumbent on us to raise the issue internationally and to call on the Pakistan Government and international agencies to ensure that the rights that any of us would expect are protected, including the rights of this vibrant community, part of which I am delighted to say is resident in my constituency.