Speeches and Articles

THE British National Party won two seats in the European Parliamentary elections as Labour suffered its worst post-war election result - and hundreds of votes were cast for the far-right party in Westminster.

The result signalled a shift to the right in British politics, with the Tories winning the Euro race and thousands of voters switching their allegiances to parties such as UKIP and the BNP.

In Westminster, the Conservatives won almost half of the vote with 15,248 supporters.

Ms. Karen Buck (Regent's Park & Kensington North) (Lab):

I am pleased to have been successful in obtaining the debate. A large part of the reason why I wanted to initiate it on the back of the publication last week of the report by the Select Committee on Home Affairs entitled "Knife Crime" was that agencies and individuals in my constituency made a very important contribution to that report. At the time, I did not appreciate that there was going to be an Opposition day debate on knife crime last night-a debate in which I took part. As an aside,… » Read more

Ms. Karen Buck MP (Regent's Park & Kensington North) (Lab):

I, too, should like to welcome the Minister for Housing to that most important post. About three quarters of householders in this country are home owners. For most of those people, most of the time, being a home owner has been a happy and successful experience. It has benefited them and their families enormously. Obviously, the majority of people still aspire to be home owners.

However, people in many of those families are experiencing real pain because of a combination of factors, including lack of affordability and changes in their… » Read more

This afternoon I introduced a Private Members Bill which seeks to repeal existing laws that allow bailiffs to forcibly enter households to recover unpaid criminal fines and aims to protect vulnerable people from the effects of disproportionate enforcement.

Last month the Justice Secretary Jack Straw decided not to proceed with Government plans to extend bailiffs' powers to use force when entering a home and seizing goods to settle civil debts.

My Bill aims to go further and repeal the existing laws which still provide Bailiffs with the right to use force over unpaid criminal fines under the 2004.

With personal… » Read more

Budget 2009: Ending child poverty is not just a moral imperative, it could help beat the recession as well

06 April 2009

Something seems to have snapped in the public mind regarding the acceptability of inequality. Perhaps it was the dramatic manner in which recent events have revealed that fabulous wealth does not seem to correlate with competence, let alone worth, but research indicates that a majority of us believe that the gap between rich and poor is too wide. The overwhelming sense is one of an injustice being perpetrated by… » Read more