Labour Party MP for Southgate and Wood Green since (defected). An MP continuously since .
Parliament recordVoting recordWritten questionsEarly day motions
Entries on this tracker
83
Each filed under the party they sat for that day
Register entries
7
As currently published
Declared while sitting for Labour
£7,714.58
6 of 7 entries state an amount
| Party | Office | Area | Period | Began | Ended | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Labour | MP | Enfield, Southgate | – | elected | left the party | Party history |
| Labour | MP | Southgate and Wood Green | – present | defected | — | Party history |
Parliament's party history for this member: Labour ( – present); Independent ( – ); Labour ( – ).
Every entry the member has in the Register of Members' Financial Interests, as Parliament currently publishes it. The wording and values are the member's own declarations; nothing here has been assessed by this site.
Totals add only the entries that declare an amount received: payments for work, donations, gifts, and funded visits (register categories 1.1, 2, 3, 4 and 5). Ongoing employment is listed but not added, because its figure is a rate rather than a sum received. Each entry is dated by when the benefit happened, not when it was registered, and placed under the party the member sat for on that date. A member who changed party therefore has a separate total for each.
| Date | Category | Entry | Declared value | Sitting for | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4. Visits outside the UK | International visit to Greece between 21 July 2026 and 27 July 2026World Hellenic Inter-Parliamentary Association | £1,770.33 | Labour | Register record | |
| 4. Visits outside the UK | International visit to Malawi between 23 May 2026 and 01 June 2026Results Education | £2,889.29 | Labour | Register record | |
| 3. Gifts, UK sources | Music Publishers Association - £1,314.00 | £1,314 | Labour | Register record | |
| 3. Gifts, UK sources | English National Opera - £358.00 | £358 | Labour | Register record | |
| 3. Gifts, UK sources | The Football Association Premier League Ltd - £550.00 | £550 | Labour | Register record | |
| 4. Visits outside the UK | International visit to Cyprus between 10 October 2025 and 13 October 2025Morphou Municipality | £832.96 | Labour | Register record | |
| 8. Miscellaneous | Director and Trustee of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association (UK Branch) | — | Labour | Register record |
<Question HRSContentId="{E6CB83AD-AC9B-4724-AEBA-B9D6608AF054}">11. <QuestionText HRSContentId="{0522B8F8-5D00-48B1-B718-5C3FB789D8F4}">What estimate he has made of the number of child trust funds received by intended beneficiaries. </QuestionText></Question>
I congratulate the Minister on her announcement, which will enable over 120,000 young people who lack capacity to access their child trust funds. That will make a huge difference to them. As she is aware, there are an estimated 800,000 unclaimed child trust funds, worth approximately £1.3 billion. What steps is she taking to enable those young people, who often are unaware of the existence of those funds, to access them? Will she work with the Share Foundation to find a long-term solution?
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Jeremy. The current model for our water service is not working for customers and has not been working for quite some time. My constituents have watched their bills rise again and again while Thames Water falls further into debt and water bosses are rewarded with huge bonuses, despite failing to invest in critical infrastructure and allowing more sewage pollution into our rivers, lakes and streams. These failures in investment, infrastructure and environmental performance have undermined public confidence, and customers have been unable to take their business elsewhere, because the water companies operate through regional monopolies. I commend the Government for trying to tackle some of those issues, but tougher regulation is not enough to deal with a model that is fundamentally broken. Thames Water is in approximately £19 billion of debt, but the rescue deal on the table is a market-led recapitalisation by its creditors that will keep the failing private ownership model intact in exchange for environmental leniency.<span id="487WH" class="column-number" data-column-number="487WH"></span> Water is an essential service and a natural monopoly, so it is reasonable to ask whether the interests of taxpayers are best served when the ownership of our water is determined by private investors. Bringing Thames Water into public ownership, either permanently or initially through a special administration regime, would allow the Government to write down debt on fairer terms than any creditor-led deal and to direct further revenue toward infrastructure and customers, rather than debt servicing and returns to shareholders. We must restore public confidence and end the era of profiting from pollution and prioritising shareholder returns over taxpayers. Our water services are too essential to be treated simply as another commercial asset. The water privatisation of the 1980s is a failed ideological experiment that has seen profits plundered into the pockets of hedge funds and offshore investors, while the sector has been starved of investment. Not a single reservoir has been built since 1992, and there has been under-investment in our antiquated pipes and overflowing sewerage system.
I support my hon. Friend 100%. We urgently need the infrastructure, because we have seen the impact of drought and the need for hosepipe bans as a result of not having the infrastructure in place. As I was saying, not a single reservoir has been built since 1992, and the underinvestment in our antiquated pipes and overflowing sewerage system is plain to see. This is not good enough. That is why public ownership is the only way forward, and why I urge the Government to put Thames Water back into public ownership as soon as possible.
The right hon. Gentleman has talked about stretched budgets. Does he agree that we also need to address debt, because private debt is a big factor in <span id="48WH" class="column-number" data-column-number="48WH"></span>preventing some low-income countries from investing in their health and education systems? It should form part of the Government’s strategy to leverage more money into debt-distressed, low-income countries.
I beg to move, That this House has considered the matter of safeguarding human rights in supply chains. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Dowd, particularly as you had such short notice. Globalisation and technological advances over the last few years have given us the ability to better connect across the world and improved our ability to trade globally. With increased connectivity comes increased awareness of issues and events around the world, and one issue that that increased awareness has brought into sharp focus is human rights in our country’s supply chains. From the Boohoo scandal, involving the exploitation of workers paid £3.50 an hour in a factory in Leicester, to the Bangladesh sweatshops making our clothes, to state-imposed forced labour for the Uyghur community in China, we have never been more aware of the need to ensure that our supply chains do not involve human rights violations and the exploitation of workers at home and abroad. Supply chains run our daily lives, but the uncertainty over where many of our daily products originate and whether they have been produced through forced labour and in inhumane conditions has wide-ranging ethical and national security implications. Here is an example to illustrate the point. This morning, a nurse in the UK woke up to prepare for her NHS shift. She wears a cotton uniform, the fibres of which were produced with Uyghur forced labour. For breakfast, she eats a banana grown by workers facing union-busting in Costa Rica. She checks her smartphone, built with cobalt mined by children in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. She makes her journey to work in a car fuelled by petrol from companies linked to threats against environmental defenders and indigenous communities in Nigeria. At hospital, she puts on gloves made in a union-busting factory in Sri Lanka, under lights powered by solar panels made with Uyghur forced labour in China, and uses surgical tools linked to child labour in Pakistan. On her break, she gets a cup of tea with a biscuit containing palm oil from Indonesia, where communities and forests have been swept away to be replaced with palm oil plantations.
The hon. Gentleman makes an excellent point. I am sure many colleagues in the Chamber will focus on the Uyghurs in their contributions, but he is right to highlight the abuse in China and the need to address it. That is the reality in UK supply chains: these products, which we use every day, are integrated into our lives. We need legislation to fix that, to prevent the abuse of human rights and the degradation of the environment.
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. The lack of trade union rights globally is seriously worrying. I am a proud trade unionist, and we need to ensure that trade union rights are respected in our UK supply chains. I will come on to that shortly in my speech. Our country is the birthplace of the trade union movement. We pride ourselves on championing workers’ rights, human rights and our democratic values. Our Labour Government recently passed the Employment Rights Act 2025, the biggest reform of workers’ rights in a generation, bringing more security to millions of workers and making work pay. Our freedoms of association and collective bargaining—some of the most important rights we have—allow workers to have representation in the face of unfair treatment and to advocate for fair pay and protections against dismissal, discrimination and other unfair and inhumane conditions. The same cannot be said for workers around the world. Workers in 75% of countries are denied the right to freedom of association. In many countries, it is illegal to be a trade unionist. Coupled with attacks on freedom of speech, we have countless reports of human rights activists and environmental defenders being threatened, or even killed, when challenging or opposing abuses by large corporations. With 50 million people trapped in modern slavery globally—a number that is <span id="447WH" class="column-number" data-column-number="447WH"></span>growing every year—and labour rights under threat almost everywhere, it has never been more critical to tackle this issue head on. Without those freedoms, workers have no power to challenge inhumane conditions that exacerbate inequality and poverty, particularly for women and children. The UK was once a leader on safeguarding human rights and supply chains, but we are now falling behind. Currently, we have a patchwork of narrow legislation and guidelines on businesses and human rights that are not enforcing our moral duty to ensure that our supply chains are free from human rights abuses.
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point, which I will come to in just a moment. I strongly support the strengthening of section 54 and its application. With the UK importing £20 billion-worth of high-risk goods every year, our current framework is not effective enough in preventing goods made with forced labour from entering the UK market, despite the Government’s stated position that no company operating in the UK should have forced labour in its supply chains. The Modern Slavery Act was considered world-leading legislation, as the UK was the first country in the world to introduce such legislation. However, the current transparency and supply chain reporting, as set out in section 54 of the Act, is wholly inadequate, applying only to organisations with a turnover of more than £36 million, and excluding public bodies, meaning many businesses and organisations fall through the cracks. The exclusion of public bodies from the duty to report on transparency in their supply chains can leave our country’s most important agencies vulnerable to being complicit in horrific human rights abuses, which affect not only the welfare of workers globally, but the stability and growth of our economy. In addition, the transparency reporting duty can be met by an organisation simply declaring that it has taken no steps to address forced labour in its supply chains; that is simply not good enough. Corporate giants with big money are given a free pass to escape their moral responsibilities by not even looking for any abuses present in their supply chains. At present, businesses are able to voluntarily identify, mitigate or prevent any forced labour risks found in their supply chains. Many responsible businesses in the UK want to do the right thing, but are being undercut by corporate giants and less responsible companies. Clear and enforceable rules are needed in order to provide the right guidance for businesses and level the playing field for all. We can address that by introducing mandatory human rights and environmental due diligence <span id="448WH" class="column-number" data-column-number="448WH"></span>legislation to hold all businesses, across all sectors, including financial institutions and the public sector, legally accountable for preventing human rights abuses and environmental harm in their supply chains. Mandatory due diligence would compel corporations to undertake proactive processes to minimise and manage the risk of violations within their operations by, for example, conducting risk assessments, requiring their suppliers to fulfil certain conditions or carrying out unannounced audits. Internationally, we are far behind our allies and partners. All other G7 nations have introduced or plan to introduce mandatory due diligence laws or import bans on goods made by forced labour. The EU is doing both. With the UK seeking a closer relationship and alignment with the EU, we must catch up. Businesses themselves have also spoken up. In the last few years, more than 150 businesses and investors, representing more than £4.5 trillion in UK assets, have publicly demanded mandatory standards. The Trades Union Congress, the Ethical Trading Initiative, the British Retail Consortium and the Corporate Justice Coalition, which collectively represent more than 350 high street brands with £800 billion in turnover, have called on the Government to introduce mandatory due diligence laws. Public support shows that people value companies that responsibly source and produce products we use every day, with four in five adults supporting new laws. By failing to update the current patchwork of legislation and guidelines, and delaying the introduction of human rights and environmental due diligence laws, we are failing workers, communities and environments integrated into our supply chains, failing UK businesses that want to do the right thing and ultimately risking the complicity of the UK economy, as well as our national security. The Government have already made it clear that supply chain resilience is critical to the UK’s economic security. In June last year, the trade strategy committed to a new supply chain centre within the Department for Business and Trade, which will play a role in supporting businesses to address the risks of forced labour in supply chains. The strategy also launched the responsible business conduct review—the UK’s implementation of the UN guiding principles on business and human rights. A year later, Parliament is still waiting for the review to be published and scrutinised, although I very much welcome yesterday’s publication of the action plan for the supply chain centre. The trade strategy rightly recognised that strengthening responsible business conduct “is not only a moral imperative”, but “a positive part of the Government’s mission to grow the economy.” Supply chains and the need to ensure that they are free of abuses and harm are embedded in our growth mission. With modern slavery costing the UK economy £60 billion every year, we urgently need to ensure that we do not lose out on more growth, and we can do that by simply introducing new legislation. The resilience of our economy goes hand in hand with our energy security. The conflict in the middle east and the ongoing Ukraine-Russia war, which have significantly contributed to the cost of living crisis for our constituents, have shown more clearly than ever that the UK must become energy independent and continue focusing on renewable sources of energy.<span id="449WH" class="column-number" data-column-number="449WH"></span> However, the security of home-grown energy is exposed when we look further into its supply chain. An estimated 98% of solar panels in the UK are produced in China, predominantly in the Xinjiang region, with forced labour from the Uyghur community. Therefore, the UK is at risk of being a dumping ground for slave labour-produced solar panels. We must ensure that, with new legislation on Great British Energy, home-grown energy is produced through ethical means, so that in producing energy to heat our homes, we do not contribute to the inhumane treatment of workers and communities around the world. In addressing those challenges, we cannot overlook the unbreakable link between safeguarding human rights and protecting the environment in supply chains; when there is a failure to protect one, the other suffers. UK imports of beef, soya, cocoa, rubber and palm oil—also known as forest risk commodities—have wiped out forests the size of our major cities. The UK’s deforestation footprint linked to those imports has increased to 39,000 hectares in the last few years and is likely to be higher. The biggest culprit is corned beef from Brazilian companies such as JBS, which have been linked to the destruction of the Amazon rainforest, the lungs of the earth. When communities lose vital access to clean water because of corporate contamination, when indigenous communities lose access to ancestral lands or when environmental defenders are threatened or killed for speaking out against mega-projects that destroy our environment, it becomes a human rights issue. New legislation must address all human rights and environmental harms in a way that provides clarity to businesses in ensuring that they are conducting themselves responsibly. The legislation needed to address those issues would protect the workers, communities and vital environments involved in producing our everyday goods. Consumers in the UK could be sure that they were shopping responsibly and not contributing to abuses around the world, and businesses could have the clarity they need in order to do the right thing. I have a few asks of the Government. Parliament continues to await the publication of two reviews set out in the trade strategy last year. Can the Minister confirm when the responsible business conduct review and the national baseline assessment will be published, the key outcomes that should be expected from those reviews, and a timeline for moving from review to action on the recommendations of each report? Given the interconnectedness of human rights, labour rights and environmental harm, can she confirm that the Government will engage in meaningful action to address this issue by adopting a thorough and holistic, rather than narrow, approach to responsible business conduct? Do the Government agree that we need cross-cutting and holistic legislation to provide clarity and certainty to UK businesses, rather than a patchwork approach that burdens businesses that act responsibly while enabling irresponsible businesses to undercut them? Failure to act on human rights abuses and environmental harm will damage the resilience of our supply chains and our economy. Introducing the human rights and environmental safeguards to UK supply chains set out in my speech is not just the right thing to do economically; it is our ethical and moral duty to ensure that the protections that we enjoy in the UK are shared across the world.
We have had a great debate. There has been lots of agreement in the room, and I am sure the Minister heard the strength of feeling about what needs to be done. We would very much welcome the responsible business conduct review happening as quickly as possible. I know that it is not in the Minister’s direct brief and I know that she is a champion of international labour rights, but we need it to happen as quickly as possible. We also need to ensure that section 54 is strengthened. That has cross-party support and I am sure that we will get there eventually, but it needs to happen quickly. I look forward to having a more detailed response from the Department in due course. Mr Dowd, thank you again for stepping into the breach at the last minute and allowing this debate to proceed. We could not have done it without you. I hope you have a very happy birthday as well. <em>Question put and agreed </em><em>to</em><em>.</em> <em>Resolved</em><em>,</em> That this House has considered the matter of safeguarding human rights in supply chains.
Held . Recorded result: Lab Hold. Majority 15,300. 45,671 votes cast from an electorate of 77,542. Parties are as each candidate stood at the time.
| Candidate | Party | Votes | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bambos Charalambous | Labour | 23,337 | 51.1% |
| Eric Sukumaran | Conservative | 8,037 | 17.6% |
| Charith Gunawardena | Green Party | 5,607 | 12.3% |
| Lauren Fulbright | Liberal Democrat | 3,925 | 8.6% |
| Lucy O'Sullivan | Reform UK | 3,147 | 6.9% |
| Geoff Moseley | Workers Party of Britain | 833 | 1.8% |
| Karl Vidol | Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition | 785 | 1.7% |
| Seat | Dates |
|---|---|
| Southgate and Wood GreenElected 1 time | – present |
| Enfield, SouthgateElected 2 times | – |
| Post | Dates |
|---|---|
| Shadow Minister (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs)Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office | – |
| Shadow Minister (Home Office)Home Office | – |
| Opposition Whip (Commons)Whips Office (Commons) | – |
| Committee | Dates |
|---|---|
| Administration Committee | – present |
| Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill | – |
| Commonwealth Parliamentary Association and International Committee of the Red Cross (Status) Bill [HL] | – |
| Procedure Committee | – present |
| Justice Committee | – |
| School Attendance (Duties of Local Authorities and Proprietors of Schools) Bill | – |
| Tobacco and Vapes Bill | – |
| Nationality and Borders Bill | – |
| Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill | – |
| Procedure Committee | – |
| Finance Committee (Commons) | – |
| Procedure Committee | – |
| Justice Committee | – |
| Constituency | Date |
|---|---|
| Enfield, Southgate | |
| Enfield, Southgate | |
| Epping Forest |
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