Member of Parliament for South Shields
Latest News
South Shields MP Welcomes New Settlement Rights
South Shields MP, David Miliband today welcomed the announcement by Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith MP, regarding the new settlement rights for former Gurkhas and their families.
Following discussions across government, with the Home Affairs select committee and Gurkha representatives, new guidance will be issued to allow all Gurkhas who served prior to 1st July 1997 and completed four years service to apply to settle in the UK with their spouses and dependent children.
Budget For Building Britain's Future
David Miliband MP today welcomed the Budget as delivering real help now to get people, especially young people, quickly back into work, and support businesses and homeowners facing problems.
The Budget also supports investment in the growth industries of the future on which Britain’s success will be built.
Getting The World Ecomony Back On Track
G20 London Summit delivers major progress
David Miliband MP welcomed the progress made at this week's London G20 summit. The Leaders at the G20 agreed to: -
Restore confidence, growth, and jobs: They committed to make available an additional $1.1 trillion programme of support to help the world economy through the crisis and to restore credit, growth and jobs.
Strengthen financial supervision and regulation: Leaders agreed to strengthen the financial system by putting in place a better and more credible system of surveillance and regulation.
Burma: Aid Before Politics, Please
Now is not the time to be thinking about a referendum. The humanitarian crisis comes first.
Foreign Secretary David Miliband and French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner
The Times
9 May 2008
The Cyclone Nargis disaster is doubly tragic for the people of Burma. Already suffering from the lowest living standards in Asia and years of misrule and mismanagement, they have now been struck by this terrible natural catastrophe.
Our differences with the Burmese regime are well known, but our most urgent task now is humanitarian. The latest figures report more than 22,000 dead. The fear is that this death toll will rise even higher since the cyclone hit the Irrawaddy delta, one of the country's most densely populated regions, particularly hard. More than 40,000 people are reported missing. According to the UN, hundreds of thousands and very probably millions are without shelter. The needs already appear huge: shelter, medicines, water purification tablets, food and electricity generators.
Less Cookson, more Ali
Tyneside town finds hidden Muslim history.
Exhibition traces Roman roots of South Shields' Yemeni community
Mark Brown, arts correspondent
Monday March 31, 2008
The Guardian
f you were asked where Muhammad Ali got married; or where the first settled Muslim community in Britain had its roots; or where Iraqi bargemen were based while protecting Roman land in England, your answer would probably not be South Shields.
The Tyneside town has preferred to market itself as Catherine Cookson country, birthplace of Britain's most widely-read novelist. But South Shields has another, less well-known history and one which a documentary film maker believes could go some way to providing answers to the current debate about multiculturalism.
An exhibition at the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead will next week explore the community of Yemeni sailors who settled in South Shields in their thousands after a sailor called Ali Said first opened an Arab seamen's boarding house there in 1894.
First stop: Afghanistan
Why we are in Afghanistan for the long haul
The Spectator
The phrase 'think global, act local' originated in the environmental movement. It can be a glib substitute for serious attention to large problems. But it can also be a telling rejoinder to the temptations of top-down, big-government solutions. I believe it is relevant to our challenge in Afghanistan.
The potential problems emanating from that country are global in scope. Afghanistan is at the centre of international terrorism and the drugs trade. But the solutions need to be local - in tune with the needs and circumstances of the people. This was brought home to me on a trip there in July.
I decided that my first visit as Foreign Secretary outside Europe should be to Afghanistan, followed by Pakistan. The reason is that what has happened in Afghanistan, and what will happen there, directly affects British interests and British people in profound and direct ways.