Abtisam Mohamed

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Parliament's party history for this member: Labour (4 Jul 2024 – present).

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1. 28 Oct 2026·Parliament·Abtisam Mohamed

   Higher Education Funding

   I beg to move, That this House has considered higher education funding. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Vaz. As co-chair of the all-party parliamentary groups on students and for international students and a member of the all-party parliamentary university group, and representing a constituency with one of the largest concentrations of students, I know at first hand the enormous value of higher education and the growing challenges facing the sector. It is worth saying from the outset that I am applying for a separate Backbench Business debate specifically on students that will cover the cost of living, maintenance support and the wider student experience. Those are important issues in their own right, but today’s debate focuses on the foundations and long-term sustainability of higher education itself. My constituency is home to two outstanding universities: the University of Sheffield and Sheffield Hallam University. I have had the privilege of studying at both institutions and, like many people, I know personally the doors that higher education can open and the horizons it can broaden. We have a world-class higher education system whose institutions are often seen as a great equaliser, especially for working class communities. Walking into universities, we know right away why they are described as centres of innovation and industry. A good university acts as an anchor in our cities and is far more than just lecture halls and graduation ceremonies.

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2. 28 Oct 2026·Parliament·Abtisam Mohamed

   Higher Education Funding

   I agree with the hon. Member. He makes an excellent point. I will come on to talking about disadvantaged students and the role that universities play.<span id="134WH" class="column-number" data-column-number="134WH"></span> Universities train the nurses and doctors who treat us. They train the teachers who educate our children, the engineers who build our infrastructure, and the researchers whose discoveries save lives. They support businesses, attract investment, create jobs and drive progress. In Sheffield we see that contribution every day. Sheffield Hallam University trains around 3,900 healthcare professionals and 2,800 teachers every year. In a single academic year, those healthcare students contributed more than 365,000 hours through NHS clinical placements. Meanwhile, the University of Sheffield generates an estimated £4.82 billion for the UK economy and supports 138 start-ups and spin-outs. Its research activity contributes billions more in economic value. Although those figures are impressive, behind them lies a fracture point. There is a growing disconnect between what we ask our universities to deliver and the resources that are available. We want universities to drive growth to boost productivity, tackle regional inequality and undertake world-leading research. We want them to support the NHS, public services and local economies, yet the sector faces a financial crisis that threatens its very survival. We have to recognise the failed funding experiments of the last 16 years and bring them to an end. I draw colleagues’ attention to the Education Committee’s comprehensive report from earlier this year, “Higher Education and Funding: Threat of Insolvency and International Students”, that identifies the real-terms cut in undergraduate tuition fees as a huge factor, though one of many, in financial instability. It is also widely recognised that the UK’s public education funding levels rank well below the OECD average of around 70%. Funding levels have fallen so far that funding direct to universities now makes up just £2 billion out of a total of £16 billion—the complete inverse of what it used to be. The majority of Government funding is spent on a bloated student loan system that is wildly out of control, while current repayment threshold freezes are punishing lower-earning graduates. Last year, the Office for Students forecast that up to 40% of higher education providers will be in deficit. Put simply, far too many institutions are being forced into a cycle of cuts just to temporarily balance the books.

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3. 28 Oct 2026·Parliament·Abtisam Mohamed

   Higher Education Funding

   I agree with my hon. Friend; he makes an excellent point. Nottingham is seen as a university that needs support, and I think colleagues across the sector will look to see how Nottingham is supported alongside their own universities. As I was saying, far too many institutions are being forced into a cycle of cuts just to temporarily balance the books. Over recent months, I have spoken to university leaders, staff, representatives of trade unions including the University and College Union, students and employers. <span id="135WH" class="column-number" data-column-number="135WH"></span>While they all have very different perspectives, they all present a common diagnosis: the current funding model for higher education does not work. That raises a fundamental question: if we recognise universities as national assets, as our rhetoric often does, why have we systematically stripped back public funding and left them to shoulder so much of the financial burden themselves?

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4. 28 Oct 2026·Parliament·Abtisam Mohamed

   Higher Education Funding

   My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. Universities need to be supported, so that the financial burden is not purely left for them to deal with. I now want to come on to international students. International students should be welcomed as an enrichment of our campuses and strengtheners of Britain’s international ties. International students’ fee income has become an essential pillar, propping up our universities, cross-subsidising home students’ education and supporting research that would otherwise be cut, but universities did not become dependent on international fee income by choice. They have increasingly relied on it because domestic teaching and research funding has failed to keep pace with the real costs of delivery. I and many others remain concerned about using an international student levy to pay for maintenance grants. It is seen as little more than an additional tax on one of the UK’s most successful exports. At a time when global competition for talent is increasing, we should be asking how we can strengthen one of Britain’s greatest success stories, not how we can make it less attractive. A restructured maintenance support system for home students, separate from international fee income, would be a vastly more successful policy, and it is one that I will continue to support. Fundamentally, any solution to the sector’s funding crisis and support for the most disadvantaged home students should not further destabilise university finances. That is especially important in a context where universities are already cutting staff, courses and research programmes. Data from Universities UK shows that nearly eight in 10 universities have pursued voluntary redundancies in the last three years, and the same amount have frozen recruitment. The UCU estimates that 30,000 jobs have been lost over the last three years. That is devastating, and we should be clear about what it means: it means rising workloads and pay erosion for remaining staff, and it means staff who support students every day losing their livelihoods. In Sheffield Hallam University’s case, more than 1,200 posts have gone in just over two years. Having met staff representatives and UCU members, I know that these numbers are not abstract; they represent people who have mortgages to pay, families to support and bills to meet. I also hear from many talented academics who are moving from one short-term arrangement to another, with little certainty about their future. The <span id="136WH" class="column-number" data-column-number="136WH"></span>consequences are felt by individuals and the community beyond the university gates, but there are also implications for the future of British research. A system increasingly characterised by insecurity will only drive talented people away. If universities are one of the UK’s greatest assets, why are they not considered to be involved in our economic growth? Although we speak of growth, skills and Britain’s future competitiveness, we see growing financial fragility across the very institutions that help to realise those ambitions. We cannot continue to expect universities to do more with less. Chasing efficiencies erodes capacity, and once capacity is lost, rebuilding it is neither quick nor easy. I have a number of questions for the Minister. First, what is the Government’s long-term vision for higher education? I want to know not simply how individual institutions will survive the next financial year, but how universities will fit into a national strategy for growth, skills, research and regional development. Secondly, does the Minister recognise that the current funding model has become overly reliant on international student income, mainly because teaching and research funding no longer meets the real cost that universities face? If the Government continue with the international student levy, what impact will it have, and how will fluctuations in student recruitment affect university finances? Does the Minister recognise that the institutions are likely to pass on those costs through higher fees, potentially making the UK a less attractive destination in the international student market? Thirdly, does the Minister believe that the current balance between public and private contributions to higher education funding is sustainable? The Government now contribute about 16p for every £1 spent on teaching. Does the Minister believe that that is a viable basis for the future funding of higher education? Will the Government examine how to move towards a fairer balance between the individual and state contributions in the long term in recognition of the enormous public benefit that universities provide? Fourthly, how are the Government assessing the economic impact of university job losses? We cannot call universities regional anchors while simultaneously accepting the loss of thousands of highly skilled jobs across the sector. Finally, where do universities sit within the Government’s growth mission? If they are engines of growth, they should be treated as such, and they need a funding framework that recognises the enormous contributions that they make to our economy, our public services and our communities. I want young people in Sheffield to have the opportunities that education gave me. I want our universities to continue training the nurses, teachers, engineers and researchers that our country desperately needs, and I want Britain to remain a world leader in higher education and research. If we want our institutions to survive, we have to stop treating them as an afterthought.

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5. 26 Oct 2026·Parliament·Abtisam Mohamed

   Topical Questions

   <Question HRSContentId="{B8AD9D5C-1363-4332-BC11-264B5D119E1F}">T2. <QuestionText HRSContentId="{180CC5FD-1131-46D9-9DBA-A4CDF30CF329}"></QuestionText>For over 12 months, academics, health workers and care workers in my constituency have been raising concerns with me about the insecurity created by proposals to treble the standard qualifying period for ILR. Can we really call our system fair when people who came here under one set of rules now face a retrospective change to the terms on which they have built their lives? Will the Minister provide clarity on these proposals and give the people affected the certainty they deserve?</Question>

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6. 14 Sep 2026·Parliament·Abtisam Mohamed

   Water Sector: Public Ownership

   It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Barker. Water is a basic natural resource, essential for public health and hygiene, but it is trapped in one of the largest ever private monopolies: we cannot choose water from a less polluted waterway or stop paying bills that rise faster than inflation, and we cannot even change suppliers. As others have said, under Thatcher, our water and sewerage system was sold off with a clean slate: £5 billion in debt was wiped and companies were given a cash boost to the tune of £1.5 billion. Yorkshire Water has paid shareholders £7.6 billion in dividends since 1989, and it has £6.2 billion in debt. That is unacceptable. Resident bill payers have paid the price. Every promise of a better system has completely collapsed under the weight of this monopoly. On Addy Street in Upperthorpe in my constituency, residents are no strangers to jets of water coming out of the ground. The most recent instance was not the first, second or even third time that they had seen a burst main, but the fourth. These are no longer unique occurrences; they are endemic to a system that is at breaking point.<span id="475WH" class="column-number" data-column-number="475WH"></span> We have to be transparent: mounting corporate greed across England will not be wished away by making it easier to sack failing chief executives or imposing greater fines on companies. The personnel are not the problem. The problem is the system of deriving massive profit from life’s essential needs. Although I welcome the Government’s planned reforms, I urge them to go further than public control and regulation, and work to bring the system back in house. Four hundred and thirty-four of my constituents have signed the petition that we are discussing today, and 440 more in Walkley have signed local activist Hannah Cawley’s petition calling for water to be brought into public ownership. They are calling for an end to stakeholder payouts, and for cleaner rivers, lower bills and real accountability. That is the least that they deserve. Sheffield, like the rest of the country, has paid enough for this failure. It is time to bring water back into public ownership, and it is time to put the people who depend on it first.

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7. 8 Sep 2026·Parliament·Abtisam Mohamed

   Israel and Palestine

   In July I led a debate on settlement expansion. I argued for international law to be respected and for the status quo to end. For far too long, we were told that a trade ban was too difficult—even impossible. For far too long, Palestinian lives have not carried the same weight as Israeli lives in British foreign policy. Palestinians deserve to have the exact same freedoms as Israelis. They deserve to live free from checkpoints, free from settler violence, free from occupation, and free from oppression. I thank the Foreign Secretary for his words, his action and, more importantly, the change of direction, and for showing that Britain can lead with a clear moral compass once again. Today is one of those rare moments when foreign policy can genuinely make a difference. Does the Foreign Secretary agree that international law can and must mean something once again? Will he confirm that the ICC arrest warrants still stand and that Britain will respect that policy?

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8. 1 Sep 2026·Parliament·Abtisam Mohamed

   Direction of Government

   I warmly welcome the Prime Minister to his place and commend him for the direction and spirit of his statement. Small and independent businesses are the lifeblood of my constituency. I hear regularly from owners such as Colin and Jack, who own two Feast coffee shops in Sheffield, that they are facing an onslaught of financial pressure. On my way here this morning, Jack told me how rising VAT and electricity prices have meant that there is very little left at the end of the month to pay himself. I know that this is the case for many other owners, and that it goes beyond the normal ups and downs of businesses. I welcome the Prime Minister’s decision to cut VAT on energy bills from October, but is he willing to explore how else we might be able to help small and independent businesses?

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9. 9 Jul 2026·Parliament·Abtisam Mohamed

   Israeli Settlements: Trade Ban

   I beg to move, That this House has considered the potential merits of a ban on trade with illegal Israeli settlements. I am grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for granting the debate, the Government for allocating time for it, Members from across the House for supporting the application, and 32,000 constituents for writing to their MPs and asking them to attend and speak on this important issue. Two embattled generations have grown up in the ashes of the collapse of the Oslo accords. What little hope was cultivated then—the promise of two states, of dignity and of democratic rights for all—has been replaced with abject misery. This is how injustice survives: not through one dramatic moment, but through gradual acceptance, the lowering of expectations and the repetition of the same statements while the reality on the ground continues to change. For years, successive British Governments have said that Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories are illegal under international law, that settlements undermine peace and that they threaten the viability of a two-state solution, yet the settlements continue to expand. I pose to the Government the simple question that sits at the heart of this debate: if settlements are illegal, why have we not banned trade with them outright? What exactly is it that we are waiting for? Why do we continue to maintain a status quo that has rewarded Israeli expansionism while punishing Palestinian aspiration—a status quo that has expected Palestinians to quietly accept that their humanity, rights and self-determination must always play second fiddle?

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10. 9 Jul 2026·Parliament·Abtisam Mohamed

    Israeli Settlements: Trade Ban

    I agree with my hon. Friend; he makes a powerful point. Some time ago, the Palestinian ambassador, Dr Husam Zomlot, reminded parliamentarians that Gaza, East Jerusalem and the west bank are not separate issues, but all parts of the same national story. They may be separated, occupied and besieged, but they are all connected by the same struggle for freedom. Together, <span id="537" class="column-number" data-column-number="537"></span>they are the beating heart of one state of Palestine—a state that the UK, our Government, has quite rightly taken a historic step to recognise. Yet, although we have recognised Palestine in its entirety, we have failed to make that recognition a meaningful reality through any follow-up action. The expansion of illegal Israeli settlements in the west bank has seen almost 500,000 acres of Palestinian land appropriated since 1967. In the last year alone, more than 120 checkpoints and obstacles have been installed to control Palestinian movement. More recently, the E1 settlement plan, which was approved by the Israeli Government, includes just short of 3,500 housing units. It includes the construction of a new neighbourhood, a new employment and commercial zone, and a new bypass road, which is for Palestinians only.

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