Speeches by Lewis.

“rose—”

“I do not know whether I am alone in this, but I am hearing the shadow Secretary of State glibly throw away 80 years of legislation on human rights—human rights that were forged in the aftermath of the Holocaust, of concentration camps, of the horrors of fascism. He stands there and talks glibly about throwing them out …”

“I thank the right hon. Member for his speech. Maybe I can answer his question. Perhaps it is because of a nostalgia for an Israel that no longer exists—an Israel that made the desert bloom. We now have a state of Israel that routinely breaks human rights law, busts human law, and creates a situation in which it is accu…”

“I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his excellent speech. There are lots of things about AI and its impact that we do not know. But one of the things that history teaches us is that if vast amounts of power and wealth are handed to a handful of individuals, corporations or even the Chinese Communist party—this is not …”

“I thank the Minister both for her response and for putting up with me—I am a bit of a broken record on this issue. We are all well aware that water is essential to life itself—to food, industry, nature, housing, energy, and now even the data centres powering the supposed AI revolution—and yet we have handed a monopoly …”

“(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if she will make a statement on the performance of the water sector.”

“South East Water is one of a number of privatised water companies that are responsible for selling off 35 reservoirs since 2017, and those companies have not built a single one since privatisation that is complete. We understand that this Government are committed to a regulatory approach to dealing with this issue, but…”

“I have listened to the Minister, and some of his points were relevant, but this is not just about technicalities and lapses of judgment. This is about a wider, rotten political culture: a 30-year project where proximity to wealth and power is not a means to an end but the end goal. That is what Peter Mandelson represen…”

“This deal with Palantir stinks. It stank before Peter Mandelson was involved, and it stank when those now on the Opposition Benches initiated the NHS and defence contracts. Peter Thiel is an oligarch who despises democracy, and the company has had widespread allegations of human rights abuses made against it. Even the …”

“Obviously, people here want to get to the bottom of this, in terms of the accountability of the Prime Minister and other elements in No. 10, and of course they want to get to the bottom of what Peter Mandelson has done. However, the public understand that this is not just about a number of rotten apples in the system—i…”

“We on the Labour Benches at least understand the historical consistency:186 years ago the Tories made economic arguments against stopping children being sent up chimneys, and 186 years later they are making the same arguments, about stopping children being put into poverty. Same old Tories, nearly 200 years later!”

“I am listening to the hon. Gentleman. Conservative Members always seem to portray this as an individual moral failing. That is how they see welfare, when actually it is about a collective insurance against economic risk. That is how we see it. You see it as a moral issue; we see it as an economic one.”

“After 18 months and an independent inquiry, the Government’s answer is more regulation, not enforcing the law as it is. Not one water company has lost its licence, yet we think that more bureaucracy and more regulation will make a difference. More bureaucracy will not fix our water. I am afraid the Secretary of State n…”

“In Norwich there is a saying: there is a church for every Sunday and a pub for every day of the week. After 14 years of austerity, the numbers are a lot lower. After this Budget, many pub landlords—small and medium-sized businesses—tell me that we are not going far enough, and that many of them will go under. They need…”

“I refer Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, which includes the donations for my work on public ownership of water, crowdfunders and my articles covering some of the topics I will mention today in Byline Times, The Guardian and the New Statesman, which are available from all good newsage…”

“The right hon. Member asked who will pay for the national living wage increase in the adult social care sector, but something he omitted—and it is quite telling—is the number of private equity companies that are extracting vast profit from adult social care. He did not mention them. He did not mention them taking a hit…”

“On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I would like to apologise to the House for failing to declare an interest when making spoken contributions on 8 March 2023, 14 November 2023 and 16 June 2025. When I made these contributions, I inadvertently failed to declare an interest: I am the chair of the British Caribbea…”

“I thank my hon. Friend for an interesting contribution. I will take a time-out on the AI component. I think it has a place and could, I am sure, contribute something, but the real way to ensure that resources are going to the right place is to ensure real devolution: empowering communities, local government and local p…”

“The hon. Gentleman is a champion of such issues in his constituency, and I agree: poverty is very often out of sight, out of mind. The dispersal of rural poverty makes it easier to hide, and harder for organisations to point out, but he does a very good job of doing so. His point was well made.”

“I thank the hon. Gentleman for his contribution. I do not raise this in this speech, but I think that one of the key ways of lifting people out of poverty is by strengthening trade unions and their sectoral pay bargaining ability, which I do not think even this Government—my Government—are going to do. That is key, par…”