Stella Creasy MP: speeches

Speeches

• 1 Jul 2025 · Parental Leave Review · Hansard source

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  I very much welcome the review. I think most people in the Chamber—with some exceptions—recognise that supporting families and children is in our national interest, and I am very pleased to hear the Government recognise that parental leave is just not enough right now, particularly for dads, and to give a commitment on that. I am concerned about the timescale for when we will be able to make progress on the issue and the implications for mothers, who may face more discrimination if they have protected rights and dads do not. Given that there is a general consensus that we need to do more to support fathers, will the Minister accept as a holding measure the amendment tabled in the Lords by Baroness Penn on introducing the Women and Equalities Committee’s recommendation to bring in by the end of the Parliament a right to six weeks’ parental leave for the second parent paid at 90% of salary, so that we can make a difference for every parent within this lifetime?

• 1 Jul 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  The main beneficiaries of Brexit have been printers, because of all the extra paperwork that the previous Government created. The National Audit Office has estimated that their border arrangements have cost us £4.7 billion and rising, and the single trade window will add to the red tape. Does the Chancellor agree that the best way to reduce the paperwork requirements in the first place is to do a good deal with Europe, and will she update us on her progress on that?

• 1 Jul 2025 · Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payment Bill · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is making an incredibly powerful case. None of us should take any lectures from the Conservatives. She and I were here when the bedroom tax was introduced. We can have many moral arguments about welfare reform, but the bedroom tax saved very little in the end, which shows that this way forward is not the way to help people into work and ultimately cut our welfare bill.

• 30 Jun 2025 · Welfare Reform · Hansard source

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  I do not doubt the Secretary of State’s commitment to getting this right. She will be very aware that, as it stands, the legal advice we have had is that these proposals will breach our obligations under the UN convention on the rights of persons with disabilities. The previous Government did that, and we rightly challenged them on it. So that we do not make the same mistake, will she give a commitment to write into a Bill that these proposals will be compliant with that commitment to ensure that persons with disabilities have social protection and the enjoyment of that right without discrimination on the basis of their disability?

• 25 Jun 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  T3. It is clear that Europe and the United States of America are diverging on how they will regulate AI. Given that our EU reset commits us to working closely with Europe on AI regulation, what talks has the Minister had about how we protect UK copyright in that context?

• 24 Jun 2025 · Alaa Abd el-Fattah · Hansard source

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  I think everybody in this Chamber, including the Foreign Secretary, is desperately worried about the health of Laila Soueif, who has felt that she has no choice but to be on hunger strike since her son Alaa should have been released last September. She is in and out of hospital, desperately ill, “dying in slow motion”, as her daughter says. I welcome the work that the Foreign Secretary and the Prime Minister have done on this case and the commitments they have made. As the Foreign Secretary knows, the Egyptians have remained steadfast in their objections. Can he confirm that he is considering all options to secure Alaa’s release, including changing the Foreign Office travel advice for Egypt to highlight the risk of arbitrary detention, so that no other family is put through this kind of anguish?

• 24 Jun 2025 · Alaa Abd el-Fattah · Hansard source

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  15. What recent progress he has made on securing the release of Alaa Abd el-Fattah.

• 23 Jun 2025 · Middle East · Hansard source

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  We all share the Foreign Secretary’s concern about getting back to considering how we end the horrors we see in Gaza and about getting clarity on the dangerous risks that Iran presents, but that means asking some difficult questions about how we get the negotiations going. We have seen today that the Israeli forces have deliberately targeted the Evin prison in Tehran. It was the prison in which Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was held. What conversations has my right hon. Friend had with the Israeli Government about whether they are now moving to target non-military installations? What does he think that would mean for the ability to restart negotiations?

• 23 Jun 2025 · UK Military Base Protection · Hansard source

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  I think we all recognise that events are moving very quickly, but may I ask the Minister about two issues that concern many of us? First, we know that the Qataris were notified, and were able to notify the Americans, of the planned attack on their base. Is the Minister in a position to tell us whether any notification of the escalation of attacks was given to this country? Secondly, can he say a bit more about his plans for the NATO summit and our co-operation with our European counterparts? The events of this week showed very clearly that we need, in Europe, to be able to act strategically to defend our interests, and to work together and step up that work.

• 23 Jun 2025 · Pride Month · Hansard source

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  Will the Minister give way?

• 23 Jun 2025 · Pride Month · Hansard source

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  The hon. Gentleman makes an incredibly powerful and important point. One word we have not yet used in this debate is allyship. One challenge is that too often it falls on to the shoulders of our LGBTQ+ sisters and brothers to fight these fights because those of us who would consider ourselves allies maybe have not been as vocal as we have needed to be. Let all of us pledge, allies alike, to join the fight to make sure we live in a country where everybody can be who they want to be without fear.

• 19 Jun 2025 · UK Infrastructure: 10-year Strategy · Hansard source

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  I welcome this investment strategy. Many of us have seen at first hand the broken infrastructure we are dealing with. The Chief Secretary will know my concern that many of the organisations we will be asking to tackle these problems are also dealing with the legacy of the private finance initiative, which saw buildings and projects cost three times more than the actual assets themselves. The pleas that many of us made to the previous Government to tackle these legal loan sharks of the public sector fell on deaf ears, and I know that this Chief Secretary will not make the same mistake. Would he be open to meeting those of us who are keen to learn the lessons of the private finance initiative? In particular, can we cap what private companies can make on military contracts, children’s care homes and other social infrastructure projects, so that we do not see our public sector savaged by these companies in future?

• 18 Jun 2025 · Crime and Policing Bill · Hansard source

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  As somebody who was incredibly proud to work with the hon. Gentleman’s predecessor on this legislation, having worked for many, many years to recognise misogyny in our hate crime framework, let me say that it will be two years in September since this House agreed to this legislation on a cross-party basis. It will be two years in September of the work being done, in theory, to be able to commence the legislation. Many of us on the Government Benches are proud of our commitment to recognising misogyny in hate crime, so will the hon. Gentleman join me in saying that we really want to understand what the barriers might be to getting on with the job that we know across this House will keep women and girls safer on our streets?

• 17 Jun 2025 · Crime and Policing Bill · Hansard source

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  I think we all agree that there are concerns about vulnerable people and abortion law in this country, but we disagree about how to address them. I propose new clause 20 as a way to address those concerns and recognise that the issue of abortion access is increasingly under attack, not just in our country but around the world. If we think that we face these challenges because we have outdated laws in this country, why would we retain them in any shape or form rather than learning from best practice around the world for all our constituents? To start, let me put on the record that I take seriously all the concerns raised across the House about abortion. I recognise that this is a complex issue, I hear strongly the stories about investigations and prosecutions, and I want to see change, but I also recognise that change does not come without consequences. New clause 20, therefore, is based on what is good abortion law—what many of us have worked on. It is based on what the sector itself used to say mattered, which was that abortion law in England and Wales should recognise developments in modern abortion law in Northern Ireland, delivering on the promise we made in this place in 2019 that abortion was a human right, that safe care was a human right for women, and that we should see a progression of minimum human rights standards on abortion, including through the proposals of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women. I want to start with how the new clause would do that. I want to be clear that only this new clause would provide for decriminalisation. Decriminalisation, as defined by Marie Stopes, means removing abortion from the criminal law so that it is no longer governed by both the Offences Against the Person Act 1861 and the Infant Life Preservation Act 1929, because that would protect both clinicians and those who are at threat of criminal prosecution. Decriminalisation would not impact the regulations on safe medical use, medical conduct, safeguarding—I recognise that is a serious concern—or the distribution of medicines, and neither would it stop tackling those people who seek to use abortion as a form of abuse or coercion. I want to explain how, In decriminalising and removing the laws that have caused those problems, the new clause would keep the 1967 Act not as a list of reasons why someone would be exempted from prosecution but as a guide to how abortion should be provided. Many of us in the House would recognise the shock for our constituents that abortion is illegal in theory and that the guidelines in the 1967 Act are the settled will of this place. To resolve any regulatory challenges, the new clause would require the Secretary of State to comply only with sections 85 and 86 of CEDAW—the convention on the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women. Those sections are about minimum, not maximum, standards of care, and that is only if the Secretary of State believes there appears to be an incongruence that needs to be addressed.

• 17 Jun 2025 · Crime and Policing Bill · Hansard source

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  I respect the fact that the hon. and learned Gentleman does not agree with abortion, but as I have said throughout my life when campaigning on this issue, stopping access to abortion does not stop abortion; it stops safe abortion. We are talking about how to provide abortion safely. He disagrees with abortion, and I will always defend his right to do so, but I will also point out the thousand women who have now had abortions in Northern Ireland safely, which means that their lives are protected. Surely if somebody is pro-life, they are pro-women’s lives as well. New clause 20 is on that fundamental question.

• 17 Jun 2025 · Crime and Policing Bill · Hansard source

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  I hope that the right hon. Member has read the human rights requirements, because they are about the treatment and dignity of the woman in question and the safety of the service provided. I do not believe that Lord Steel would want women to be put at risk; indeed, I think that is why he fought for that original legislation. We have supported these human rights treaties in this place for other reasons. The new clause, as in the provisions in Northern Ireland, would use the human rights requirements as a guide—a template or a test—as to whether the safety and wellbeing of women is at the heart of what many of us believe is a healthcare rather than a criminal matter. The new clause sets out additional tests for how we would interpret those human rights provisions. It brings in the international covenant on economic, social and cultural rights to constitute the rights of women to sexual and reproductive health and gender equality. Fundamentally, those human rights are about equal treatment of each other’s bodies. At the moment, the lack of a human right creates an inequality for women in my constituency and his—an inequality that women in Northern Ireland do not face. We should shape services around their wellbeing; it is an established principle. Some have argued that we should not make this change through amendments to legislation. This issue has always rightly been non-governmental, and there are people who disagree with the right to abortion, and people who support it, in every single party. That means that proposals for reform of abortion will always come from Back Benchers, or from somebody who has won the golden buzzer of a private Member’s Bill, which happens very rarely. For those who have called for consultation, the good news is that it is exactly what we got by voting for abortion to be a human right in Northern Ireland. If hon. Members’ concern about this amendment is the lack of consultation, they should know that voting for it will trigger a consultation on how to apply the human rights test to abortion provision in England and Wales, so that we can test whether our services meet the objectives that we set for women in Northern Ireland.

• 17 Jun 2025 · Crime and Policing Bill · Hansard source

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  I am sorry, but I cannot. I will tell him afterwards why I cannot, but I promise that it is not out of a lack of respect for his position. Some say that Northern Ireland is different, but why would we think that women in Northern Ireland are different from women in England and Wales when it comes to human rights? We are seeking not to remove our regulations, but to apply the same test to them. We simply want the Secretary of State to ask whether they are human-rights compliant. Those who celebrated bringing abortion to Northern Ireland, and who continue to promote it, did not just celebrate the provision of a service; they celebrated the liberation of women from this inequality, which we risk perpetuating for our constituents.

• 17 Jun 2025 · Crime and Policing Bill · Hansard source

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  I will, one more time, and then I want to make some progress.

• 17 Jun 2025 · Crime and Policing Bill · Hansard source

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  I am sorry, but I cannot take any interventions. New clause 20 is primarily about whether we think that abortion is a human right, and how we apply that principle to our laws here. It is also about the very present and real threat to access in our communities. Members will have seen outside this place the modern anti-abortion movement that we now have in the UK, and will have received the scaremongering emails. Of course those in that movement are reacting more strongly than ever to the idea of women having this human right protected in law, because their opposition is not about children. If it was, they would not shout at mine when they see them in the street. It is about controlling women. They do not openly advocate for an end to abortion access, but they make lurid claims, including the claim that there would be abortion at birth, so let me put that one to bed. Because new clause 20 retains the 1967 framework, it retains not just the time limit—crucially, it is different from new clause 1 in that regard—but all the provisions in the 1967 Act relating to everyone involved in an abortion.

• 17 Jun 2025 · Crime and Policing Bill · Hansard source

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  I respect the right hon. Gentleman’s belief, and I will always defend his right to it. I tell him this, however: the human rights of the woman carrying the baby are intricately related to the ability of the baby to survive. If we do not look after women and protect their wellbeing, there will be no babies. The human rights test allows us to ask whether it matters to us that we treat women equally when it comes to the regulation of this healthcare procedure. Practically, it also means that there is somebody to champion those regulations. In Northern Ireland, the human rights commissioner has taken the Government to court when access to the procedure has been denied. She has established buffer zones and safe access to abortion clinics as a human right. Indeed, she is now looking at telemedicine as a human right, and at how to provide it for women in a safe way.

• 17 Jun 2025 · Crime and Policing Bill · Hansard source

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  I am sorry; I cannot take interventions because of time. Those who worry that new clause 20 removes outdated laws should look at the limited number of prosecutions that have taken place under existing laws, and compare it to the number of investigations that have taken place. Let us deal with the claims that are being put about. First, there is a claim that repeal would mean that there would no longer be the crime that MSI has called reproductive coercion. That is what it called the offence of coercion in the Serious Crime Act 2015, which it hailed. That offence would remain, and it explicitly covers forcing someone to have an abortion, giving the same penalty as section 59 of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861. Those who claim that coercing someone to have an abortion would be legal under new clause 20 have not paid attention to that legislation, or to the calls from the abortion providers to ensure that more healthcare providers—and, it seems, more Government lawyers—are aware of that 2015 law, and of reproductive coercion. Those who claim that the loss of the “concealment of the body” law in section 60 of the Offences Against the Person Act would facilitate live abortions should look at the existing laws on grievous bodily harm and actual bodily harm, which are used in such cases because of the difficulty of proving an offence under section 60, and indeed because of the requirements of the Infant Life Preservation Act 1929. Having given birth to a baby at 37 weeks, I want to be very clear why time limits and medical decisions matter when it comes to abortion, not just to the application of substance misuse laws. Let us be very clear that there would be criminal offences to cover the cases that the hon. Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Dr Johnson) described, but we are also talking about removing laws that have criminalised people who have had stillbirths. These are people who need our compassion, and who need us to be able to differentiate between an outdated law that criminalises abortion and the malicious intent in the substance misuse legislation. People should recognise how seldom these offences can be proved because they make no sense. Also, in retaining the 1967 Act, we retain the good faith principle for all parties to an abortion. That would deal with the trope of sex selection; nobody can prove that abortion for sex selection reasons has happened, but that is covered in the good faith arrangements that are retained with the 1967 legislation. I return to the subject of Northern Ireland, because it was not the absence of regulation that made a difference; it was Parliament voting to make abortion a human right, and then the Government working with us to make it happen. Voting for new clause 20 would kick-start a similar process. We know that Government lawyers never really like to deal with change—who does?—but this is the proper and appropriate way to proceed, and in our Parliament, this is the only way for Back-Benchers to make changes on matters of conscience. Those of us who recognise that reproductive rights are the foundation of social justice know that now is the time to act. If we are not free to control what happens to our bodies, we cannot be free in the rest of our lives. Those who are playing politics with abortion play politics with equality. The Vice-President of the US has attacked our buffer zones. We should not tolerate his interference in any matter of human rights. Only new clause 20 would give buffer zones that human rights footing. We would not ask a woman to carry to term a baby that would die at birth, but again, there are people in this place who call our abortion laws ludicrous, and who advocate for a reduction in the time limit, putting a woman’s health second. That would not happen with a human rights framework. Those of us who care about these rights need to act tonight. Less than half of all men under 40 in this country believe that abortion should be legal in most cases, so those who feel that abortion is a settled matter that cannot be weaponised in our politics need to listen to the drumbeat already banging loudly in this country. We face a choice today. We know that these laws are outdated. Do we retain but limit them, or do we remove them and get ahead of what is to come? I urge colleagues who care about these matters to listen to our American counterparts, who bitterly regret not having acted under Biden and Obama to protect abortion access, and who now find medics being prosecuted and dragged across state lines. Do we learn from how Parliament has acted before? Procedurally, Members know that if new clause 1 is passed, new clause 20 cannot go to a vote, so they will not have the chance to say whether they believe that a safe and legal abortion is a fundamental human right. I want to be clear that I will support new clause 1, but with great hesitation. That is not because I dismiss those proposing it. I hope we can all agree that there are genuine and decent terms for disagreement. It is because new clause 20 brings in a lock on ministerial powers. It explicitly restricts what Ministers and the Government—not Parliament—can do on this subject in a delegated legislation Committee. It has been surprising to learn, in these debates, how few people have had the joyous experience of sitting in a delegated legislation Committee, stacked by the Whips with Government MPs, that makes major changes to the law, but in 15 years, that has happened to me a number of times. We have seen it on tuition fee rates and welfare cuts, and the previous Government tried to do it with the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Act 2023. Only new clause 20 would stop Ministers using regulatory powers to overturn abortion rights. They could use them only to bring in human rights-compliant regulations. Conversely, if new clause 1 is passed, there are no constraints on how Ministers could use the powers. The Minister might say that the new clause brings in no requirement to make regulations. That is true. New clause 1 does not require regulation, but it can and will facilitate it. As the Hansard Society points out, Ministers sometimes seek powers in a Bill to enable them to take actions that they consider appropriate. That leaves Ministers with huge powers. New clause 1 would bring abortion within the province of this legislation and give the Secretary of State enabling powers to make laws relating to abortion, as long as they would not reverse the disapplication of abortion law to a person acting in relation to their own pregnancy. The powers could be used to target medics, or the family of a person seeking an abortion. I therefore ask the Minister to explicitly give a commitment that if new clause 1 is passed, there will be no further regulation on abortion under the Bill, and no application to make new clause 1 workable or to clarify the impact of a prosecution on the anti-abortion laws that remain. If the Minister cannot do that, by definition she proves that that power will exist. By contrast, new clause 20 would restrict that. It would give power back to this place. Nobody can bind a future Parliament, but we can demand that it is not small Committees of hand-picked, select MPs making decisions on the Government’s behalf, and that each of us should be able to act on behalf of our constituents. Criminalisation does not reduce or deter abortion; it just makes it harder to carry out safely. We should be clear that criminalisation will remain if only new clause 1 is passed. If we want the decriminalisation that the sector has always advocated for—for good reason—it is only through new clause 20 that we can achieve that. I hope that colleagues in the Lords will have heard this debate, and will not let these matters rest. Regret has no place in politics. It certainly has no place in the politics that I came here to represent. When there are those who would seek to attack women in this way, I pledge to continue fighting for women’s rights. I pledge to continue fighting to make abortion a human right in this country, and I ask colleagues to consider the case for doing so in this way. But I ask people who care about this to think about this moment and whether we will ever have another one when this Parliament could act in such a positive, constructive and established way. We can get one thing over the line. Why not make it the thing that would make the biggest difference to our constituents?

• 16 Jun 2025 · Windrush Day 2025 · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is making an incredibly powerful speech. Does she share not just my tribute to Amelia Gentleman for the work she did to uncover what happened with the Windrush scandal, as well as people like Colin McFarlane and the Justice 4 Windrush Generation campaign, but my horror at the evidence we have seen this week that those given compensation to date have not actually been given the same amounts as those in other comparable scandals? Does she agree that we must right that wrong from this place?

• 4 Jun 2025 · Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories · Hansard source

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  Let us be short and frank, then. For many of us in this House, this is no longer complicated. Time has run out for claiming ambiguity of action. Since 20 May, we have seen 22 more settlements. It is deliberately made dangerous for people to access aid, and the Israel Defence Forces have declared the roads to the aid distribution centres “combat zones”. The Minister says that the Government have raised concerns and have called for immediate independent investigations, but those have not happened—not just in this incident, but repeatedly. He will not tell us what he will do. This is on the consciences of us all, so we have to ask him to be clearer. Will he tell us what is not on the table? Will he rule out things? He has told us that he is talking about the future, but will he rule out immediate recognition of Palestine, which many of us have been calling for, the sanctions that many of us have been calling for, and a final resolution of the F-35 farce? If he does, at least we will get sense of where this is going.

• 4 Jun 2025 · Product Regulation and Metrology Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  The right hon. Member had the luxury and benefit of being on the Public Bill Committee. I did not have the ability to ask the questions that he is asking, but I look at the evidence under the previous Administration. When there was the ability to diverge, what actually happened? The reality is that very little divergence happened, because it is not in our national interest. We can, and do, fight many things in this place —indeed, in British politics—but geography really is not one of the things that it is worth our time arguing about. Given that we do five times more trade with our European Union neighbours than with America, China and India put together, it obviously makes sense to have a regulatory regime that makes that trade as friction-free as possible, which is where this piece of legislation comes in. Indeed, under the previous Government, there were only five cases of active divergence—the sort of changes that the right hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Holden) is worried about—that might affect small businesses. That is with good reason, because if we have a sensible regulatory regime, it makes sense to be aligned. The Prime Minister has talked about that, and it is also what businesses want. The Engineering and Machinery Alliance, which represents over 1,600 firms from 11 different trade associations, puts it very simply. It says that our businesses “are trading in European markets and are part of European value chains. They have European customers and suppliers. For companies operating in highly specialised, high value markets, the UK is unlikely to provide the mass needed to develop and successfully market their products. They need to be international and that means working to international standards—the EU’s being, almost always, the most appropriate.”

• 4 Jun 2025 · Product Regulation and Metrology Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  The hon. Member can take it as yes, but he will know that I am sticking very closely to the amendments, because I want to come on to how we make such decisions. First, though, we need to be clear that this legislation will affect the lives of our constituents. Let me give one example. I am a child of the 1980s; I remember the Glo Worm. Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for looking surprised—I hope it is a look of surprise, but perhaps you are remembering the Glo Worm yourself. The point is that the Glo Worm turned out to be quite a dangerous toy because of the chemicals it contained. Regulations help to keep us safe, so when we are talking about sharing regulatory regimes and being able to promote markets, there is a good reason why we are seeking high standards. I hope that everyone will hold the Glo Worm as an example—it has now been reissued without those chemicals in it, thank goodness, so that children of the 2020s can enjoy those squidgy toys. What matters is how we make decisions about such regulations, and the debate on this Bill heralds a bigger conversation that we need to have in Parliament about how we can be involved in those decisions now that we are not part of the European Union. Obviously, agrifood and sanitary and phytosanitary goods are not included in the Bill, but the Government have now committed to dynamic alignment with EU rules for a very common-sense reason. As the Prime Minister has said, “we are currently aligned in our standards, but we do not get the benefit of that. We want to continue to have high standards; that is what the British public want”. —[ Official Report , 20 May 2025; Vol. 767, c. 894.] I hope that is the ethos we take in how we use the powers in this Bill. It is certainly what businesses would like us to do.