Extract from Commons
debate on International Women’s Day
(East Renfrewshire)
(SNP): I rise to speak as No. 404. Obviously, none of us
should simply be a number, but being only the 404th woman to be
elected to this place seems astonishing to me, in this day and
age, when we would all like to believe that we had moved beyond
all that. But we have not. Both at home and further afield, the
life chances of women and girls are too often hindered by
barriers, sometimes insurmountable ones, that should not be
there.
We all know of exceptional and inspiring women in the public eye
who have overcome those barriers, against all the odds, but there
are many women who plough through more quietly and are just as
influential, and who are no less impressive for being out of the
public eye; women such as my late mother-in-law, Harbhajan Kaur,
who spent her young life in rural India, where she taught other
young women, before moving to Scotland and raising her own
family, teaching her own girls to be strong, independent women,
as she was. Today we must applaud all the individual women around
the world who are pushing against the barriers.
I recently saw an Indian television advert about a cheery chap
called Gurdeep who ran a sweet shop selling piles of
delicious-looking ladoo. His shop was called Gurdeep Singh &
Daughters, and the message behind the advert was that girls can
do anything that boys can, which of course is true. In some ways
it is a great shame that in 2017 we even need to say that. But we
do need to say it, and that holds true here just as much as it
does in India...
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Extract from Business
Questions
(Manchester, Withington)
(Lab): I thank you, Mr Speaker, and the Leader of the
House for this opportunity to pay brief tribute to . After my selection as
a parliamentary candidate, I was lucky enough to attend many
community meetings and events with my next-door neighbour. They
would often reflect the causes that Sir Gerald championed, such
as the rights of the Palestinians or Kashmir. I particularly
remember doing a Bollywood dance routine with him on an open-air
stage in Longsight market a couple of years ago. I have to say,
his dance moves showed up my own, even though he was well into
his 80s at the time...
Extracts from Lords
debate on Brexit: Options for Trade (EUC Report)
(Lab):...I will
mention one other thing before I sit down. The report is about
UK-EU relations but those relations are also important for the
prospect of deals with the rest of the world, on which the
Government are embarked, and for the sequence of events. For all
the talk of doing deals with Mr Trump, New Zealand
or India, while preliminary discussions can
no doubt take place, no deals can be signed until after we leave
the EU customs union and the common external tariff. That is not
simple. Even if scheduling what are currently EU tariffs as
provisional UK tariffs at the WTO may be relatively
straightforward, we will then have to unravel from EU
arrangements. Until we do that, it is not possible to conclude
other deals, because not only is it unclear whether third
countries currently party to an FTA with the EU will be prepared
to offer the same terms to a market of only 60 million that they
offered to a market of 600 million, it is technically difficult
in many cases, because many EU tariffs also have tariff quotas
attached. This applies in particular to agricultural and
commodity trade. Since many third countries, including New
Zealand and the USA, are big in agriculture, as
are India, Brazil and most of the developing
countries, the divvying up of those tariff quotas will be a very
complex early stage in negotiation. This has implications for
trade with the third world, as well as trade with the EU as
such...
(CB):...My
final point is perhaps the most important. There sometimes seems
to be an assumption behind the Government’s rhetoric that with
one bound we will be free from the constraints of the EU and the
single market—which, incidentally, as others have said, takes
more than 40% of our exports—and shall be able to trade easily
through new bilateral trade agreements with China, the
US, India, Australia, Brazil and others. But
those are all tough potential partners, with a clear sense of
what is in their interests. They and other countries will
negotiate what they want out of negotiations and not what we
want. Such negotiations will be tough, protracted, complex and at
times ugly—and it is no use pretending otherwise...
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