Yesterday I wrote to members of my Constituency Labour Party on the challenges ahead after last week’s referendum. This is what I said: Dear Member/Supporter, Describing the events of the past week or so as momentous doesn’t really come close to it, does it? Britain votes to leave the European Union of which we have been part of for over forty years. And by doing so our country enters …
Whilst debate about the EU often focuses on the economic and political advantages, I wanted to put the spotlight on the EU’s largely overlooked role in improving the lives of animals. Over the past 25 years the EU has been responsible for improving the quality of animals’ lives and preventing cruelty. The bar has been raised not only in Britain but across all member states.
Some years ago I was approached to become a “Guardian of the Memory”. Established by Yad Vashem, the world centre for Holocaust research, the idea is both simple and powerful. There were 6 million Jewish victims of the Holocaust. 1.5 million of them were children. The Guardian of the Memory project recognises that each one one of those who died has a right to be remembered by …
Leave campaigners have been trying to tell us for months that if we leave the EU, everything will carry on as normal and there will be nothing but sunshine. When visiting the UK last week, US President Barack Obama told us it isn’t as simple as that. No surprise then that the same Leave campaigners went into overdrive about the US bullying us and that this was an unreasonable intervention …
On Tuesday (15 March) I held a debate in Parliament calling on the Government to speak the truth on new anti-boycott rules which many fear represent an unprecedented attack on democracy. The rules, announced last month, by a Government minister during a visit to Israel – without any parliamentary or public scrutiny – aim to ban public bodies including local councils and universities from refusing …
Today, Yuli Edelstein, Speaker of Israel’s Knesset addressed MPs in a meeting hosted by the British Group of the Inter-Parliamentary Union. Follow the link to read my question to him.
I was Labour Member of Parliament for Birmingham Northfield between 1992 and 2019 and a former Shadow Transport Minister. I now chair Healthwatch in Birmingham and Solihull, and the West Midlands Board of Remembering Srebrenica. I also work as a public affairs consultant. I am an effective community advocate and stakeholder alliance builder with a passion for human rights. I am a trustee of the Balfour Project charity and of Citizens Advice Birmingham, and a former Chair of Medical Aid for Palestinians.