Mum’s the word – or is it ‘mom’?
PROUD Birmingham MP Jess Phillips has revealed she demands that Parliament’s official report records her talking about her ‘ mom’ in the House of Commons – not her ‘mum’.
Like many people in Birmingham and the Black Country, she spells the word with an ‘o’ rather than the conventional ‘u’.
Some have claimed that ‘mom’ is in fact the American spelling.
Every speech by an MP is printed in Hansard, the official report of events in the Commons.
But Ms Phillips, Labour MP for Birmingham Yardley, said Hansard’s writers sometimes overlook her Brummie accent and she insists they change the spelling to ‘mom’.
She told the BBC’s Daily Politics show: “I’ve had the same thing changed on two different occasions. Because I’m from Birming- ham, and when I say the word ‘mom’, if I talk about my ‘mom’ or if I talk about being a ‘mom’ in the House of Commons, they always write it ‘mum’.
“And I am from Birmingham and we spell it ‘mom’.” She added: “And it annoys me every time that they sort of try and sanitise my regional accent.”
Ms Phillips spoke about her mother in her maiden speech in the House of Commons in May 2015.
She said: “In 1966, the Yardley Great Trust gave my mom a grant to help poor local kids stay in education, so that she did not have to leave school to help her single mother with the housekeeping before doing her A-levels.
“She went on to achieve a great many things and gave me and my brothers a good life and lots of opportunities. Birmingham, Yardley was good to my family, and I plan to repay this debt.”
Paper copies of Hansard are distributed to MPs, and the reports are also available for anyone to see on Parliament’s website.