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From
House of Commons Hansard 23rd May 2005
Mr. Sadiq Khan
(Tooting) (Lab):
I thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for allowing me to make my
maiden speech this evening, so saving me from the torture
that we new Members have to go through as we attempt to
catch the eye of the occupant of the Chair. It is easy to
recognise us wherever we sit in the Chamber, clutching our
speeches and looking pale and shifty and, as the evening
goes on, looking paler and shiftier.
I congratulate my hon.
Friends the Members for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne)
and for Portsmouth, North (Sarah McCarthy-Fry) and the hon.
Members for Newbury (Mr. Benyon) and for Windsor (Adam
Afriyie) on their excellent maiden speeches.
I feel both proud and
humble to stand in my place today. I am proud that I can
join this great debating Chamber and bring my constituency
of Tooting to the attention of all hon. Members here. I feel
humble to be speaking in a place that has been the home of
great and famous orators down the decades and where
legislation that has changed the face of Britain for the
better has been passed. Much of that legislation has been
passed by the Labour party, which has improved the lives of
so many working people, including my own family.
I am Tooting, boy and
man. I was born in the constituency and I have lived there
all my life. I married a Tooting girl, Saadiya, and we are
bringing up two beautiful daughters there, Anisah and
Ammarah.
When I was selected as
the Labour candidate for Tooting, I was able to realise an
ambition of mine, which was to represent Tooting in
Parliament. I am immensely proud to have been given that
honour. I thank Tooting Labour party for its trust and hard
work throughout the campaign. Its members will all go to
socialist heaven. I hope that, over the coming weeks, months
and years, I can repay the confidence that the Tooting
community has shown in me.
In 1970, the year in
which I was born, my predecessor, Tom Cox, came to
Parliament. He represented Wandsworth, Central, which became
Tooting after boundary changes. For 35 years, he was our
Member of Parliament and we were all extremely proud of him
and grateful for his unstinting work for the community. Of
course, Tom was the only Member who represented me.
We first met when I joined the Labour party as a
15-year-old. We became friends and have remained so ever
since.
When I became a
councillor, 11 years ago, it was always Tom whom I could
talk to about how much the decisions of Parliament affected
the people in my ward. I realise that many hon. Members knew
Tom well. He was an assistant Government Whip from 1974 to
1977, when he was promoted to Whip and served until 1979.
After his experiences, he views our majority of 66 as a
luxury. I say that while looking towards the Whips.
Tom Cox served the
people of Tooting with distinction in the casework that he
undertook, in the Adjournment debates in which he took part,
in the early-day motions that he signed, in the all-party
groups of which he was a member and in much, much more.
I dug out Tom's maiden
speech from July 1970. Its two main themes were education
and industrial relations. For most of the first 27 years of
Tom's stay in the House of Commons, his preoccupation was
with education. I experienced the terrible problems to which
underinvestment leads. I have vivid memories of old and
tatty books, crumbling buildings, heating that did not work,
which meant that we were left shivering through lessons in
winter, outside toilets and teachers who were always
involved in industrial action against the Government—I could
go on.
I have been a governor
at Fircroft primary school, which I attended, for the past
11 years, and my elder daughter started there in September.
I can honestly tell the House that the changes made there
since 1997 have been incredible. Gone are the outside
toilets—in fact there is no school with outside toilets in
Tooting—gone are the tatty and outdated books and gone are
the days when the staff were in constant dispute with the
Government. We have free nursery places for three and
four-year-olds, and 6,200 children benefited from that in
the past year alone. We also have 90 new teachers locally.
Although my secondary
education at Ernest Bevin comprehensive was enjoyable, that
school also had problems and there was always some sort of
funding crisis. Just before Christmas 2004, it received more
than £500,000 of investment, with even more improvements in
the pipeline. I pay tribute to the hard-working teachers
who, despite the problems to which I referred, encouraged me
to go to university and become a lawyer. I hope that the
hard-working teachers of today see this Government as being
100 per cent. committed on the side of state schools, all
staff and all children.
The other main theme in
Tom's maiden speech in 1970 was industrial relations. He
talked about the need for trade unions and management to
change their attitudes. Tom could have been writing a
template for the sort of partnership that this Labour
Government have helped to foster between businesses and
trade unions and between the CBI and the TUC. As a committed
trade unionist, I am terribly proud of the improvement to
the work-family balance.
As hon. Members might
have realised, I am immensely proud of Tooting. It is
everything that is great about the new Britain in which I
have been brought up. It is multi-ethnic, multi-religious
and properly multicultural. Many different cultures live
happily side by side and there is a true sense of tolerance.
Geographically, Tooting is in south-west London but,
metaphorically speaking, it is at the centre of the
universe. Tooting is everything that is fantastic about our
country and an excellent case study of what makes London the
best city in the world.
I have visited several
churches in my community over the years and the local Sikh
Khalsa centre. We have four excellent mosques. We have the
Hindu society on Garratt lane and a Tamil temple. We have a
well-run Jewish residential home for the elderly and
thriving amenity groups, mother and toddler groups and trade
union activity. There are examples of Christians, Muslims,
Sikhs, Hindus, Jews and those without faith living together,
and not just being tolerant of each other's faiths and
beliefs, but living in positive harmony. Community cohesion
is not political jargon, but what Tooting is all about.
Three years ago, my
right hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen (John
Denham), who was then a Home Office Minister, came to
Tooting to open the police contact centre at the Tooting
Islamic centre. The local mosque and the police are thus
working together with the community to provide a service to
all. Anyone can come and receive crime prevention advice,
have their property marked and meet the local police. The
local community sees the police in a positive light and,
just as importantly, the centre allows the police to meet
the local community in a non-confrontational setting. It is
a real example of a partnership and policing by consent. It
also shows that the local Muslim community is not insular,
but wants to give something back to the rest of the
community by offering premises free of charge. That is an
example, post 9/11, of the real Islam, where followers of
that great faith believe in the well-being of the entire
community, charity and partnership All the faiths are part
of the wider community in Tooting, so each autumn and
winter, the main roads around Tooting and Balham are lit up
with the festival of lights celebrating the festivals of
Christmas, Eid and Diwali.
It is important that
all in our society feel that their Government are looking
out for them. Unfortunately, an anomaly has meant that some
of our community fail to get the full protection of our laws
against hate crimes. Incitement to racial hatred has rightly
been outlawed for some years now and it is a good thing that
the courts have developed case law that protects Jews and
Sikhs. Unfortunately, followers of multi-ethnic faiths, such
as Muslims, Christians and Hindus, are not protected. I am
afraid that the far right knows about that loophole and has
been using it to incite hatred against Muslims, especially,
over the past few years. I am pleased that we have a
manifesto commitment—the Secretary of State referred to it
earlier—to rectify that and give all our citizens equal
protection. I hope that hon. Members on both sides of the
Chamber will consider the measure properly and not believe
the nonsense that it will endanger the freedom of speech of
comedians, theologians, priests and the like.
My father came to this
country 40 years ago as an immigrant from Pakistan. Sadly,
he passed away recently, but he would have been proud to
have one of his children elected as the Member of Parliament
for Tooting and to know that we had been accepted fully as
part of British society. My father taught me the sayings, or
hadiths, of the Prophet Mohammed—peace be upon him. Mohammed
taught that, if one sees something wrong, one has the duty
to try to change it. If that is not possible, one should at
least voice one's support for something that is good, or
voice opposition to something that is wrong. If that is not
possible, at the very least in one's heart one should know
that something is wrong or right. I am proud to say that
those values and that ethos are not shared only by Labour
Members, because I am sure that we all share that sense of
duty and service to our constituents.
I thank you, Mr. Deputy
Speaker, and long may I catch the Deputy Speaker's eye. I
thank the House for the courtesy that it has shown in
helping me through the ordeal of making my maiden speech.
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