British Asian MP Imran Hussain was wrongly referred to as ‘Mohammad Hussain’ during a debate on racism in Parliament yesterday.
Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle apologised for the ‘honest mistake’ when he announced it was the Labour MP’s turn to speak.
As he stood up to make his comments, Sir Lindsay called him ‘Mohammad Hussain’ – with Parliament’s official livestream, parliamentlive.tv, recording his name as Mohammad Yasin, the Labour MP for Bedford.
Other MPs could the be heard shouting ‘Imran Hussain’ and urging the Speaker to correct the error.
In a statement, Sir Lindsay said: ‘This was an honest mistake. I called Imran as soon as I could to apologise – and he accepted.’
Bradford East MP Mr Hussain stood to speak in the urgent question about racism experienced by Yorkshire cricketer Azeem Rafiq.
He condemned the ‘violent language’ faced by the cricketer in his time at Yorkshire County Cricket Club.
The Labour MP also criticised the cricket club for not having shared a ‘full copy’ of the report into what happened to Rafiq with the public, instead having only sent a redacted version of the report to its former player.
‘It is shocking that even after all this that the House has requested a full copy of the report and has been denied it,’ said Mr Hussain.
Culture minister Chris Philp later made similar calls for the report to be released publicly, as did the Conservative chairman of the Culture and Sport Select Committee, Julian Knight.
Mr Hussain added that the language experienced by Mr Rafiq was ‘not friendly banter’, but was ‘racism plain and simple’ and was the ‘tip of the iceberg’ of the ‘normalisation of racism’ in sport..
Post a Comment