Labour Party MP for Ilford South since (elected). An MP continuously since .
Parliament recordVoting recordWritten questionsEarly day motions
Entries on this tracker
163
Each filed under the party they sat for that day
Register entries
4
As currently published
Declared while sitting for Labour
£0
0 of 4 entries state an amount
| Party | Office | Area | Period | Began | Ended | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Labour | MP | Ilford South | – present | elected | — | Party history |
Parliament's party history for this member: Labour ( – present).
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| date registered | 6. Land and property | Property in London | — | Labour | Register record |
| date registered | 6. Land and property | Property in Bedfordshire | — | Labour | Register record |
| date registered | 6. Land and property | Property in London | — | Labour | Register record |
| date registered | 8. Miscellaneous | Leader of Council and Councillor in Redbridge Council. This is an unpaid role. | — | Labour | Register record |
<Question HRSContentId="{CE2044F0-6033-42DC-88C8-E78030C99528}">8. <QuestionText HRSContentId="{6E04195C-46F2-4E39-AB8E-71050A762E8D}">What fiscal steps he is taking to support high streets and town centres.</QuestionText></Question>
My constituents and I welcome the Budget measures to support small businesses in Ilford South, including the business rates freeze for retail, hospitality and leisure properties, which will benefit more than a thousand businesses across my constituency. Will the Chancellor outline what further fiscal steps the Government are taking to support high street businesses, such as those in my constituency, to encourage investment and ensure that our town centres remain vibrant, thriving places for generations to come?
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for West Dunbartonshire (Douglas McAllister) for resolutely leading the charge in Parliament to bring <span id="643" class="column-number" data-column-number="643"></span>British national Jagtar Singh Johal back home. Earlier this month, after almost nine long years behind bars, Jagtar finally walked out of prison and into the arms of his loved ones. After nearly a decade of anguish and uncertainty, his family could finally experience a moment of relief. It is frankly shameful that our great country has allowed a British national to languish in a foreign prison, reportedly to face torture, in what the UN has confirmed is arbitrary detention. More shameful still is that despite this long overdue breakthrough, Jagtar’s nightmare ordeal is far from over. He may be out of jail, but he has had to surrender his passport. He remains trapped in India, thousands of miles from home, and still faces eight outstanding cases—cases that, in nine years, have yet to reach a conclusion or, in some cases, even a start. Britain has failed Jagtar, and frankly India has, too. India, which prides itself on being the world’s largest democracy, has dragged its feet for nearly a decade, failing to bring those cases to a conclusion within a reasonable timeframe, and trapping a British national on foreign soil for nine long years without conviction. I ask two questions to the Minister—I appreciate that other Members have raised similar matters. What concrete diplomatic steps have the Government taken, and what further action will they now take to secure Jagtar’s safe return to the United Kingdom? Secondly, what does it say about Britain if we cannot secure the freedom of one of our own citizens after such a long time? Jagtar’s case is a matter of deep national humiliation. His bail must spur urgent action to bring him home; it should not become another milestone that we merely welcome before turning to the next item on the UK-India agenda, or a trade deal.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir John. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Hertford and Stortford (Josh Dean) for securing this important debate on an issue that matters greatly to my constituents. My first job was as a paper boy; I would not say that I had to lie, but I certainly had to say that I was a little bit older than I really was to secure the job. In a debate about financial inclusion, it would be remiss of me not to mention student loans, one of the greatest barriers to young people achieving financial security. In the financial inclusion strategy, the Government rightly recognised the importance of embedding financial literacy in the curriculum to empower young people to make informed financial decisions. However, there remains a glaring gap when it comes to student loans. Young people seeking to go to university do not have a proper <span id="375WH" class="column-number" data-column-number="375WH"></span>understanding of what they are signing up to. They are either unaware of the scale of the student debt they may incur or are misled into believing that student loans are not real loans. Some are told, “You don’t even have to pay them back.” One constituent told me that although she wanted to pursue an apprenticeship, she was instead encouraged to go to university. All the virtues of university were relayed to her, but none of the drawbacks. She was told that student loans would be the easiest loans she would ever take out. Now she is saddled with tens of thousands of pounds-worth of debt and mounting anxiety about how she will ever pay it back. Financial literacy cannot simply mean learning about taxes, savings and budgeting. It must also mean understanding student loans, the first debt many young people will ever take on, so that they can make a genuinely informed decision about whether university is the right path for them. Although I welcome the Government’s ambition to encourage saving and prevent people from being burdened by debt, unless we fully address the student loans crisis, millions of young people will be saddled with loans of around £30,000 and upwards right at the precipice of their adult lives. The debts continue to grow despite repayments, imposing a seemingly insurmountable financial burden on young people for the majority of their working lives. That inevitably impacts their ability to save. A Barclays survey revealed that savers with student loans put away £2,000 a year less than their peers without student debt. If we are serious about improving financial inclusion, helping young people to save and building financial resilience, we cannot ignore their single biggest financial commitment, which many of them make before they have even entered the workplace and can end up feeling for the majority of their working lives. I welcome the Government’s financial inclusion strategy and the steps they are taking to ensure financial inclusion for young people, but we must tackle every barrier to financial security. That includes addressing a student loan system that leaves young people feeling weighed down by debt before they even have the chance to get ahead.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Stringer. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes (Melanie Onn) for securing this incredibly important debate. I pay tribute to the South Park Users Group in Ilford South. Come rain or shine, they dedicate their time to keep our parks and streets clean through regular community litter picks. I also put on record my appreciation for the River Roding Trust, whose members collectively cleaned up 200 bags of rubbish from the River Roding, picking up the slack when Thames Water and the Environment <span id="65WH" class="column-number" data-column-number="65WH"></span>Agency should have acted. I commend them for their dedication to ensuring that the residents of Ilford South live in a cleaner and safer environment. Fly-tipping is a scourge that repeatedly comes up in conversations with residents. Recently, I visited a local school where children as young as 10 interrogated me about the fly-tipping that blights our area. The fly-tippers may think that they are invisible and that they can dump their waste and get away with it, but fly-tipping is one of the most visible crimes in our communities. When people see it on their way to work, on the school run or while walking their dog, it drains local pride, chips away at social trust and sends a message that our streets, parks and rivers do not matter.
I absolutely agree. I have been saying for the last 10 years that that should be done. The Government finally acting is a real positive; we are going in the right direction. Fly-tipping blights our area, but when the council removes it quickly, people feel it is okay to dump rubbish on our streets because someone will pick it up. We cannot win either way; it becomes a vicious cycle. The more that people see the local area as a dumping ground, the more some feel enabled to fly-tip, meaning that the problem spirals unless it is fully tackled. I know from working with my local council that decisive steps are being taken to tackle this blight on our communities. For instance, it maintains free bulky waste collection, removing a lame excuse for fly-tipping. It is cheaper to pick up from people’s doorsteps in a controlled manner than from the streets once the waste has been dumped. Redbridge council has implemented not only that policy, but the wall of shame, which is an approach that has been adopted by other councils: naming and shaming to expose the waste cowboys who impose their mess on us. That sends a clear message that such behaviour is unacceptable in Ilford South and that those who fly-tip on our streets will be held accountable. I welcome the decisive actions the Government have already taken to support local authorities battling fly-tipping, from expanding council powers to crushing the vehicles of serial fly-tippers and making offenders clean up the very streets and parks they have ruined. We need to go further to target the very worst offenders. The council needs to be able to set larger maximum fines to generally deter serial fly-tippers and to demonstrate that although fly-tipping may seem inconsequential to them, it is one of the worst forms of antisocial behaviour. With tough enforcement, councils could use extra revenue to fund detection—
The grooming gangs represent the most profound betrayal of some of the most vulnerable people in our society, and the victims were failed by the very institutions that should have protected them. Justice was denied, while perpetrators <span id="988" class="column-number" data-column-number="988"></span>escaped accountability. The vile individuals who systemically groomed, abused and violated these girls must face the full force of the law. Can the Minister provide an update on Operation Beaconport and explain how its work is helping to identify offenders, secure justice for victims, and strengthen the national response to tackling these heinous crimes?
To keep with the current theme of the beautiful game, the Buza youth football academy in Ilford South has been running for only six years, but, in that time, the youngsters—the under-nines—have won the Echo junior league, and the under-11s and under-13s have won cups and competed abroad. Two of its players now have contracts with West Ham United; they are aged only six and eight, but they are talented. Will the Leader of the House join me in congratulating this wonderful club on the quick strides it has made, its wonderful coaches and the work of the parents, in helping these children progress so quickly?
<Question HRSContentId="{F4EAF9F2-7146-4EF2-8199-97C34C1CBE69}">4. <QuestionText HRSContentId="{D678DC04-7BEE-45E6-A12F-9C7BC3273ABF}">What steps she is taking with Cabinet colleagues to help reduce the cost of living in Wales. </QuestionText></Question>
This Government removed the two-child cap, which took 5,000 children in my constituency out of poverty. Will the Secretary of State please explain how that is helping children in Wales?
Held . Recorded result: Lab Hold. Majority 6,894. 41,170 votes cast from an electorate of 80,993. Parties are as each candidate stood at the time.
| Candidate | Party | Votes | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jas Athwal | Labour | 16,537 | 40.2% |
| Noor Begum | Independent | 9,643 | 23.4% |
| Sayeed Syduzzaman | Conservative | 6,142 | 14.9% |
| Syed Siddiqi | Green Party | 3,437 | 8.3% |
| Raj Forhad | Reform UK | 2,329 | 5.7% |
| Golam Tipu | Workers Party of Britain | 1,366 | 3.3% |
| Richard Clare | Liberal Democrat | 1,340 | 3.3% |
| Andy Walker | Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition | 376 | 0.9% |
| Seat | Dates |
|---|---|
| Ilford SouthElected 1 time | – present |
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