Gaza

Baroness Deech Excerpts

Monday 27th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Northover]

I shall write to the noble Lord with the number, but I know from all the Written Answers that I sign off the pressure that we have been seeking to put on the Israeli Government to lift this blockade, recognising that an improved economy in Gaza is essential for the people of Gaza, but also for the security of Israel.

[Baroness Deech (CB)]

My Lords, the Minister will be aware that today is Holocaust Memorial Day, and the Prime Minister has just announced the setting up of a Holocaust commission, but under Hamas in Gaza, teaching about the Holocaust is a crime and its official policy is to deny the Holocaust. What steps would the Minister advise in the interests of bringing peace, to ensure rationality and peace education for the children of Gaza, alongside accountability for funds, which is another matter?

[Baroness Northover]

I pay tribute to the noble Baroness for the work she has done on ensuring that the Holocaust is never forgotten. I was pleased that my daughter asked me this year to take her to Auschwitz, which I did. I mark Holocaust Memorial Day—it must never be forgotten. The UK Government keep a very close watching brief over what is taught in schools both in Israel and the Occupied Territories to see what is put into textbooks. There have been improvements there, and in lessons, but there is still a long way to go. The noble Baroness is clearly right that trying to ensure that children in all communities respect each other and other communities is vital.

Animal Welfare: Methods of Slaughter

Baroness Deech Excerpts

Thursday 16th January 2014 Grand Committee

[Baroness Deech (CB)]

I wish to dwell on the selectivity in the Question as regards “some” animals. Ethical, religious and legal factors should be universally applied and not selective. This is a country in which fishing is a national pastime. Fish die from being left to suffocate and being gutted, which takes quite a while. We shoot foxes and trap them. We cull badgers by shooting and perhaps gassing them. We shoot stags and pheasants. We decapitate rabbits. Millions of lobsters have their claws bound and are thrown into boiling water where they thrash for a long time. Chickens and turkeys are swept through an electrically charged water bath and then are immersed in scalding water but it frequently goes wrong. It has been found that 26% of turkeys and one-third of chickens probably enter the scalding water while still alive and sensible.

Stunning cattle is vaunted as superior to Jewish slaughter, but it frequently goes wrong. The Jewish method ensures immediate cerebral perfusion and is irreversible. No electric prods are used and one animal is not killed in the presence of another. I am not religious in my attitude to food but I greatly respect the attitude of those who are orthodox and their religious slaughtermen, who regard the killing of animals as an act that should be not only humane but infused with respect and reverence, remembering at all times the gravity of what they do and never becoming slapdash or hardened. This attitude should be more widespread, so that we do not see newspaper reports of deliberate mistreatment of animals in abattoirs for fun.

The European Food Safety Authority found that about 12 million cows suffer from failed stunning. That greatly exceeds the entire annual quantity of cattle slaughtered for the Jewish religious community, which is a few thousand. There should be more focus on what goes wrong in stunning and the cruelty inflicted on other animals, and less pointing the finger at the Jewish few thousand if we are to be fair and ethical in our worries.

International Day of the Girl

Baroness Deech Excerpts

Wednesday 9th October 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Northover]

As the noble Baroness knows, we have the Equality Act, by which the law protects the equal status of girls and boys in the United Kingdom.

[Baroness Deech (CB)]

Will the Minister tell us what measures are being taken in this country to make sure that girls under 16 are not removed from school and sent abroad during the summer vacation for arranged or forced marriages? Will there be check-ups on girls to see who has not returned to school in the autumn term after such a practice?

[Baroness Northover]

The noble Baroness is right to highlight this issue. This is something that has come increasingly to our attention. There have been programmes of engagement with schools—she may know of the one in Bristol—and there is engagement elsewhere. Teachers have been asked to look out for girls who travel in the holidays and may not return, because it is extremely important that this issue is tackled.

Gaza

Baroness Deech Excerpts

Monday 23rd July 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Northover]

The right reverend Prelate makes a very cogent case. We condemn violence on both sides, but improving the economy in Gaza is essential, not only for the people of Gaza but also in Israel’s security interests. At the moment, the blockade of Gaza and insufficient access through the crossings has meant that use of the tunnels has magnified considerably, which assists Hamas and certainly does not assist Israel’s long-term interests.

[Baroness Deech]

Is the Minister aware that thousands of Palestinians are treated in Israeli hospitals and that Palestinian trainee doctors receive training there as well? The situation across the Middle East for women and children is dire—for instance, in Syria, where thousands of children have been killed. Could it be that non-governmental organisations go in to make a report only where they are allowed and that we therefore take our eye off much worse situations?

[Baroness Northover]

The noble Baroness might like to bear in mind that the OPT, the Occupied Territories, are the poorest part of the Middle East and North Africa, with the exceptions of Sudan and Yemen. It is against that background that we urge that everything possible is done to allow the economy of the West Bank and Gaza to grow. The WHO estimates that travel is denied to 10% to 25% of medical professionals and students who apply for Israeli-issued permits to leave the West Bank and Gaza to attend medical training. That does not help things either.

West Bank and Gaza

Baroness Deech Excerpts

Tuesday 29th May 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Northover]

In 2009, the previous Government put in place a voluntary agreement on labelling produce from the settlements. It is notable that the major supermarkets in the United Kingdom have taken that forward, so that labelling is there. No preferential treatment is given to produce that comes from the settlements.

[Baroness Deech]

Is the Minister aware that the aid per capita to Palestinians is the highest in the world, the greatest share of British aid goes to the Palestinians rather than any other country in that area and that the living standards of Palestinians is actually higher than some of their neighbours, including Egypt and tragically Syria and Morocco? Will she assure the House that the money is being properly spent—not on corruption, terrorism and teaching hate in Palestinian schools?

[Baroness Northover]

The noble Baroness can be assured that the aid given by the United Kingdom is very closely monitored. It goes through the World Bank trust fund and we are encouraged by reports about how that expenditure is carried forward. I would point out that movement restrictions were estimated to cost the Palestinian economy 85% of GDP in 2010. Obviously, the more that we can do to free up the economy so that the Palestinians do not need that kind of support the better.

Gaza

Baroness Deech Excerpts

Wednesday 8th February 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Northover]

I am aware of that. The noble Lord is right that the division between Gaza and the West Bank, both geographically and politically, is indeed playing a part here. We urge all sides to co-operate together to ensure that medicines get across and do get into Gaza.

[Baroness Deech]

Is the Minister aware that around 300 Questions have been tabled during this Session on Israel, Gaza and the associated areas, with, sadly, little effect? We have had only around 20 Questions on Iran, 30 on Syria and only one relating to the Arab spring. Is the Minister confident that this House is seeing the widespread crises throughout the Middle East in perspective and that British representations on Gaza are set in the context of the whole area? I find it very odd—maybe other Members do as well—that we have not had a debate on the Arab spring.

[Baroness Northover]

The noble Baroness is right to flag up problems in other areas across the region. All these issues need to be addressed, and of course what happens between the Israelis and the Palestinians also plays out in those other areas. It is extremely important that we seize these issues right across the region.

Middle East: Water

Baroness Deech Excerpts

Thursday 27th October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Deech]

Like others of your Lordships, I welcome and feel privileged to have been here for the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Williams of Baglan. We can readily see that the House will benefit from his wide experience and I wish him a long and happy career here. I also congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, and agree with all the encouraging words and actions that he has described, stemming from his own experience. I express an interest as a trustee of the Jewish National Fund, which invests inter alia in environmental projects in Israel.

I welcome the fact that the international community is addressing in a constructive way, in the excellent report The Blue Peace, the issue of transforming water supply into a trigger for collaboration and peace in the Middle East. As I will show, there are some grounds for hope. Already, as a result of the peace treaty between Israel and Jordan in 1994, Israel provides Jordan with a significant contribution to Amman’s water supply, plus a storage capacity, and in return Israel is allowed to pump groundwater from the Arava basin from wells in Jordan. Israel and Palestine have an active joint water committee that meets regularly and Israel supplies water to Gaza, although maintenance is another issue.

The entire region is beset by common problems; a growing population, a diminishing supply of water and elevated expectations coming with higher living standards. Syria is drought-hit, through climate change, manmade desertification and lack of irrigation. One has to think long-term, for the alliances and enmities in the Middle East may change. Alongside the massacres inflicted by Syria’s Government on their own people, their mismanagement of agriculture and irrigation add to their woes. Israel can hardly be expected to reach a deal with Syria over Lake Kinneret while that country is in a state of uprising. Iraq accuses Syria, Iran and Turkey of practices that reduce the flow of water to the Tigris and Euphrates. The political instability of these countries exacerbates the environmental concerns. Turkey is unlikely to be a reliable partner in relation to the export of Turkish water to the Jordan Valley, a project which has been considered, because of Turkey’s changing needs.

However, there is good news too. At Ben Gurion University in the Negev there is funded a joint project between Israelis and Palestinians to address clean water issues in the West Bank area of Nablus; the team includes one person from Ben Gurion University, a professor from the Biodiversity and Environmental Research Centre in Nablus and an American. They are working on purifying secondary waste water, an immediate resource for irrigation. Also at Ben Gurion University, researchers have an award from the NATO Science for Peace programme to work on desalination in Jordan and in Israel; they work in collaboration with colleagues from the Hashemite University of Jordan and from the US. Ben Gurion University has its first Jordanian PhD student. Having completed his first degree in Jordan, he went on to earn his masters degree at the Zuckerberg Institute for Water Research and then on to the PhD program there in the Negev and it has resulted in published research by Palestinian, Israeli and Jordanian authors together. Israeli technology is being introduced into Jordan.

There is a project known as the Red Sea-Dead Sea Canal project, already mentioned this afternoon—sometimes called the peace conduit—which, if it comes to fruition, will be a joint Israel-Palestine-Jordan undertaking. It envisages a pipeline from one sea to the other that would carry up to 2 billion cubic metres of seawater per annum to the Dead Sea, of which half could be desalinated and the rest would replenish the Dead Sea. The water level there has dropped in 50 years by almost 30 metres and the surface area has shrunk by a third in a century. There are environmental concerns with the project, which the World Bank is considering at the moment, but if it worked it would be a splendid demonstration of regional co-operation. The potential donors to this are Italy, France, Greece, Korea, Japan, Holland, Sweden and the USA. One can but hope that the current euro financial crisis does not weaken this venture, one I hope that the UK Government will encourage. Its success would arrest the deterioration of the Dead Sea environment and provide drinking water to the Middle East.

Israel, Jordan and Syria have all diverted water from the upper Jordan Valley and deprived the Dead Sea of the input of water. But the situation is not necessarily a manmade problem. Research has estimated that today’s low level of the Dead Sea was also the case in about 800 AD. The temperature in the Middle East over the centuries has oscillated between calamity and abundance, the researchers say. We should not always blame human activity, for over time climate change has affected human behaviour in migration and agriculture as much as the other way round. Nevertheless, at this time drought is increasing in the Middle East.

It does not help the situation for accusations to be flung by one country at another. They are all in it together. Amnesty International rather predictably whipped up what has been called hydro-hysteria in its report Thirsting for Justice in 2009, which took a one-sided approach to the evidence on water resources between Israel and Palestine.

The Palestine Water Authority has had much responsibility for water delivery since the mid-1990s and is beset by accusations of mismanagement, although it is in receipt of grants from the World Bank and others. Before 1967, only 20 per cent of the Occupied Territories was connected to a water network; now 90 per cent has running water. Israel has stuck to its commitment under the Oslo peace accord and has even increased the committed allocation, with the result that the water supply for Palestinians is better than that provided in Jordan and Syria. However, 30 per cent is lost through leaks in the West Bank.

What are the solutions? First, the UK Government should urge the World Bank to progress the Red Sea-Dead Sea project and join in themselves, if they can. They should encourage the joint Palestinian-Israeli meetings taking place through the joint water committee. They should publicise and, if possible, assist in grants to the outstanding initiatives of the Ben Gurion University, with especial emphasis on desalinisation and joint working; there is already one scholarship for a Ben Gurion University student to Oxford and a project to create another at Oxford Brookes. They should note that the Palestinian National Authority is the world’s largest per-capita recipient of international development assistance, and try to ensure that some of that largesse is devoted to water management and improved water delivery.

The thinking behind the Blue Peace report and all the many studies of the water issue rests on an assumption that people want to live in peace and use water as a natural way of sustaining life. If martyrdom is preferred, then all assumptions collapse. There is an old fable about a scorpion asking a frog to carry him across a river. The frog is afraid of being stung during the trip but the scorpion argues that if it stung the frog, the frog would sink and the scorpion would drown. The frog agrees and begins carrying the scorpion, but mid-way across the river the scorpion does indeed sting the frog, dooming them both. When asked why, the scorpion points out that this is its nature. There is a variation on the ending in which the scorpion says, “It is better that we should both perish than that my enemy should live”. This is what I feared might apply to water in the Middle East, but I am cheered and wish to end with the words of the Jordanian PhD student at Ben Gurion University, who maintains that water is a great conduit for peace in the region. He says:

“The problem in what’s happening right now in the region is that there’s no trust at all between our leaders—but between our scientists there is trust”.

Gaza

Baroness Deech Excerpts

Monday 13th December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Verma]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that question. All dialogue and all conversations are very welcome if they encourage peace.

[Baroness Deech]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that Gaza has other very severe sources of hardship, which include: the enforcement of morality rules against women; attacks on Christians; the bombing of Christian schools; the persecution of journalists; and the killing of political opponents? All of those are due to the enforcement of the regime by Hamas. Does she further agree that perhaps the person in Gaza who suffers most is that long-term captured prisoner, Gilad Shalit?

House of Lords Reform Bill [HL]

Baroness Deech Excerpts

Friday 3rd December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Deech]

My Lords, I find myself in the unenviable position of being one of the last speakers to contribute to the debate. However, the brilliant and learned maiden speeches to which we have been treated are a hard act for any of us to follow. I agree with everything that the noble Lord, Lord Steel, said, save only that I do not see the Bill as a symphony; rather, I see it as scratching at two itches—overcrowding and political balance.

I declare an interest as one who was appointed to your Lordships' House by the existing House of Lords Appointments Commission. Therefore, I am naturally inclined to think that it does a good job. As background to the Bill, I call attention to the pride that we take in this House and its history, which leads me to think that we must—as the Bill does—identify, root out and punish misconduct, and be seen to do so. We must police ourselves; other measures do not seem to work.

The country needs to have confidence in this organ of government. Confidence is not the same as trust. Trust is belief that is not necessarily evidence based; confidence is generated by proof of sound governance in relation to past behaviour and guarantees about the future. In saying this, however, I remind myself of the very persuasive thesis of my noble friend Lady O'Neill, whose Reith Lectures in 2002, “A Question of Trust”, were so prescient. She said:

“Perhaps the culture of accountability that we are relentlessly building for ourselves actually damages trust rather than supporting it”.

She said that, in the end, there has to be some trust. That trust would be enhanced by taking the measures in this Bill, which would demonstrate that this House deserves the confidence of the nation.

We have to ask in what way this House could improve itself. We could certainly do so by talking not about an elected House but about its status quo. Hence, Part 4 of the Bill should, for the avoidance of doubt, include the power to suspend or even expel Members for breaches of the Code of Conduct and the expenses rules, even if they do not necessarily amount to criminal conduct. Clause 5, which sets out the criteria for appointment, should have added to it the willingness to abide by and understand the code. Arguably, the conditions for termination of membership in Part 4 are too narrow.

There is a welcome reminder of diversity in Clause 5(4). Appointment to this House is the best way to get more women and minorities into government, since the House of Commons has not wholly succeeded in that aim and the electoral process will always make that difficult. It is noticeable that recent political appointments to this House include relatively few women. Since January 2003, there have been 215 purely party-political appointments to this House, of which 150 are men and 65—that is, less than half—are women. That is a foretaste of what an elected House would be like: it would be more male and probably have fewer disabled Members. It cannot but be welcome that the statutory commission proposed in the Bill would be responsible for filtering all appointments, including political recommendations. That would certainly put a stop to any suspicions in the media about donations and peerages. The requirement of “conspicuous merit” as a criterion in Clause 5(2)(a) would serve as a comfort and guarantee to those nominated.

Genuine democracy would be strengthened by the provisions in Clause 8, which seek to ensure that no one party or coalition would have a majority by appointments and that the government party should have only a small majority. That would serve to ensure genuine debate, for which this House is best suited. The Cross-Benchers would continue to play their important part in standing by whatever argument in debate is the most convincing and in voting accordingly. However, the more influential the Cross-Benchers are, the more one hears disparaging remarks elsewhere in the House about the way in which they split or how they can be unpredictable. That is the most important and heartening element of the Cross Benches and the most attractive to the outside world. There is nothing more disheartening than seeing a majority put together by those who have not thought for themselves about the implications of what they are doing. That charge can never be made against Members of the Cross Benches, who set a lead in terms of quality and action that the Bill would confirm.

A statutory commission with overarching control over the membership ought to have the power to achieve what has been called for on all sides—namely, a moratorium on new appointments. Not only is the membership of this House too large, the struggle by each party to gain proportional representation equates with an attempt to secure an elected House by other means. A cap at around 700 Members would be a good start. In approving appointments on conspicuous merit, a requirement to reflect proportionality as represented in the results of the most recent election should not be a factor, although proportionality in a cohort of appointments might be.

Your Lordships are well acquainted with the arguments for and against paying Members of this House for their services, on which we have recently been through a review. I advert to the issue because it is linked with retirement and the need to move people along at a certain age. We have reformed our expenses regime in reaction to recent events, so this is not the time to change it again, but, sadly, we will not attract younger Members without providing recompense for what they may have to give up in their professional lives in order to attend. Expenses is an unpopular issue, and one of the strengths of this House is its relative economic efficiency. However, candidates are excluded if they cannot afford to attend, especially if they do not live in London. I hope that the statutory commission, when it comes about, can promote the viability of membership of this House among those who live outside London and who therefore necessarily incur extra expense.

I support the Bill because it recognises that the strength of this House is its expertise, its dedication and its understanding of its relative place in the constitution alongside the House of Commons. The House provides government through expertise, dedication to civil liberties, experience and passion to get it right. The House can be a great forum for the scrutiny of the Executive only if it has recognised competence, integrity and authority, which this Bill could enshrine in the House’s membership. The noble Lord, Lord Steel, is to be congratulated on persisting with this worthy reform.