Middle East (IRC Report)

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Tuesday 4th July 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords, it was a privilege for me to be a member of the committee. The report that we compiled has been pretty well received by most of its contributors. A special thanks, of course, to the noble Lord, Lord Howell, who did a great job as chairman, and a very special thanks to the staff of the committee. It may not be apparent from the text of the report, but it was compiled in great haste because of the advent of a completely unexpected—certainly on my part and, I think, on that of most other people—general election, which put a heavy burden on our staff, particularly our policy analyst, who was outstanding in putting it together.

It has to be said that the evidence that we received and many of our findings about the Middle East today do not make happy reading. To describe much of the region as troubled and unstable is a huge understatement. As we put it:

“The region is violent; disfigured by inter- and intrastate conflict and by sectarian divisions”.


There is also the involvement of foreign powers in the region. One witness said to us in terms that there have been massacres and brutal episodes of sectarian violence intermittently for 1,400 years in the region but, he added, in the broad sweep of history, it is noticeable that tensions have been at their most bloody when external powers have been involved.

This inevitably raises the question of Britain’s involvement in the region. Our activities have been intense, over a very long period and often in dramatic ways. There is the drawing of international boundaries in the colonial period, the involvement in the region during two world wars, the Balfour Declaration, the overthrow of Mosadeq in Iran, the Suez crisis, wars in Iraq, Libya and Syria, the oil trade and arms sales—on and on, not all triumphs.

It is not unreasonable to ask: might it not be better for Great Britain and everyone else if we disentangled ourselves and left well alone? The committee’s view was that this would be neither realistic nor desirable, if for no other reason—in truth, there are many reasons—than, as one of the witnesses pointed out,

“what happens in the Middle East does not stay in the Middle East”.

It seems impossible to discuss any aspect of British foreign policy these days without mentioning Brexit, and our committee does not disappoint. Nearly all the witnesses were questioned on the subject, and I can report—wait for it—that our conclusions are essentially benign. As we report:

“The significance of Brexit on the Middle East is, on balance, less than elsewhere. Policy in the region relies on bilateral relationships and security commitments”.


Sir Derek Plumbly, former British ambassador to Egypt and Saudi Arabia, told us that Arab Governments,

“tend instinctively to look beyond the EU to national governments”,

and we received evidence that a number of states in the region would welcome the development of bilateral trade and other relationships with Britain post Brexit.

On overseas aid, where much of our budget is channelled through the European Union, and while there can be economies of scale in doing so, in the words of Neil Crompton, director of the Middle East and north Africa department at the Foreign Office, Brexit might be “slightly liberating”, in that UK diplomats spent,

“an awful lot of time negotiating EU positions that we do not always agree with”.

Surely anything which eases the pressure on diplomats cannot be all that bad.

However, while our membership of the EU may not be pivotal to our trade, aid or defence policies in the Middle East, there is no doubt that our key allies in Europe remain, and will continue to remain post Brexit, enormously important. As Jack Straw, who gave evidence to the committee, said, the reality has always been that foreign policy at EU level requires France, Germany and the United Kingdom to agree to it, and that is how it will be in future.

That is particularly true in the case of Iran. As we write in paragraph 205:

“It is in the UK’s interests to pursue a better relationship with Iran, and we recommend that this should be a key priority for the UK”.


A pivotal part of that relationship is the joint comprehensive plan of action involving Britain, France, Germany, the US, China and Russia. The signing of an agreement on a subject as sensitive as Iran’s nuclear programme, while undoubtedly a considerable achievement, was unsurprisingly viewed with a mixture of anxiety and hostility by the Saudis, the Gulf states and Israel. And yet—and this is one of those things that often comes out when you are taking evidence—despite all the national rhetoric, frequently, and in many important ways, relationships between the Gulf states and Iran, and even between Saudi and Iran, in trading terms if nothing else, are developing all the time, whatever the comments by national Governments. But of course the Trump Administration are hostile to the deal and, as Jack Straw again said in his evidence, there is a feeling among the Iranians that their country was humiliated by the deal and has received nothing in return. Our committee said that it was in our country’s interests to continue to support the deal, irrespective of any opposition from the US, and that it is in our economic as well as our strategic interests to open up new sources of finance and investment in Iran.

While at least we could identify a strategy that, albeit slowly, might improve the Iranian situation, there was nothing positive whatever to report about Israel/Palestine. While virtually every international actor and, indeed, the principal parties to the dispute themselves pay lip service to a two-state solution, the prospects of it being achieved according to our witnesses are at best on hold or at worst diminishing by the hour. The central problem—and there is no way of evading this—is the continued growth of illegal Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian land, which makes the possibility of a viable Palestinian state ever less credible. Since 2009 alone, more than 80,000 settlers have moved into Palestinian land, bringing the grand total to well over half a million. Our witnesses ranged from Jack Straw, who said that the settlement activity made the establishment of a two-state solution incredibly difficult, to the then Minister, Tobias Ellwood, who said,

“the growth of settlements is coming perilously close to making that”—

a two-state solution—“an impossibility”.

Yet I am sorry to say that our Government have been sending mixed messages, as we report, on this crucial issue. We supported UNSC Resolution 2334, which said that,

“the establishment by Israel of settlements in the Palestinian territory … constitutes a flagrant violation under international law and a major obstacle to the achievement of the two-State solution”.

Yet on 29 December, we distanced ourselves from then US Secretary of State John Kerry, when he said that the,

“status quo is leading towards one state and perpetual occupation”.

In January this year, we again distanced ourselves, this time from the Paris conference, which included 70 countries that reaffirmed their commitment to the two-state solution.

It was absolutely clear from our witnesses that the two-state solution itself is perilously close to moving from being a difficult though feasible strategy to a meaningless, unattainable mantra. The Israeli Government’s public position is to support the two-state solution but, in practice, their policies are not even benign ones of inactivity; they are active ones of settlement-building, which inexorably makes their declared strategy unachievable. Our committee was clear that the consequences of the two-state solution becoming impossible would be a grave development for the region, and that playing our part in resolving the conflict must be a high priority for British foreign policy. Irrespective of any contrary view coming from Washington, we should give our clear support to the French-led international initiative. If the Israelis with their settlement activity further imperil the prospect of a solution, we should be ready to support appropriate United Nations resolutions. As a demonstration of our commitment to two states, we should give serious consideration, as the Commons did in the last Session of Parliament, to recognising a Palestinian state. There is a logical gulf somewhere between supporting a two-state solution and only recognising one state.

It would be easy to be overwhelmed by any inquiry into the scale of the problems faced by a region as vast and challenging as the Middle East. We concentrated our recommendations on those areas where we could make practical suggestions that we felt were important for British foreign policy while being realistic about our country’s capacity to change things for the better. But doing nothing, as we are frequently reminded, is in itself a policy option, and by no means always the best one. I have focused on just a couple of areas, Iran and Israel/Palestine, where our extensive involvement goes back decades and where I believe we still have the capacity to make a difference—and I believe that we should.

Brexit: Case for a Second Referendum

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Thursday 7th July 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords, it may have been some time since the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, was canvassing and campaigning among Labour voters in the Midlands and the north if he thinks that, in 18 months or so, where they voted widely 2:1 to leave, they will want to go along with such a manifesto as he has described. But I do not want to spend time referring to what has been said before.

It should be the simplest of propositions; it should be the simplest of speeches. Parliament decided that the public should make the decision in a referendum. The public have given us that response. Our duty is to respect that and to implement it—end of discussion from where I am standing.

I know that that causes pain and distress to a lot of people who are on the other side of the argument—it would have done whatever had happened. Perhaps I can offer one piece of expertise to the House, which is that I am something of an expert on losing elections. I know what noble Lords are feeling. Having fought eight general elections—won four and lost four—I know that the feelings that you go through are almost exactly the same. When you lose, your opponent lied; your opponent made promises that he could not possibly keep; probably your opponent had more money than you did; and certainly the press were on your opponent’s side. On the four occasions when I won, I am happy to say that it was a triumph of British democracy.

These responses to losing and winning are unfortunately the case with referendums as well. We have had three in the past five years, all of which were said at the time to be defining referendums. The first was on AV versus first past the post, where the latter was supported by a two-thirds majority. Within a year, a substantial number of people, including many in my own party, said, “Oh well, forget about that referendum result. We’ve got to get on with PR as quickly as possible”. On the Scottish referendum, within weeks of Scottish National Party leaders saying, “This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity”, they were saying, “Oh, perhaps we ought to have another referendum soon”. However, I must say to my noble friend Lady King, whom I am very fond of and have known for a long time, that she really has beaten the world record. It is 10 days since we made a decision and now we’re saying, “Well, no, we ought to look at this one again”. We know what she is saying and I respect it: she wants a second referendum to reverse the decision of the first. That is what it is about. If I am misrepresenting anyone, please could they explain that to me now.

[Baroness King of Bow]

My Lords—

[Lord Grocott]

Honestly, I have only three minutes; it is ever so difficult.

I sat through the whole Committee stage of the referendum Bill. The referendum was supported by the Conservative Front Bench, by the Liberal Democrat Front Bench, by my Front Bench, by the Green Party, by the Scottish National Party and by the Welsh national party—all parties supported the referendum. I never heard anyone say, “This is only the first of two referendums”; I never heard anyone say, “Oh, this is just an advisory referendum. You don’t have to take much notice of it. It’s useful advice, but let’s leave it at that”. The unanimous view of this House—no one voted against—was that the public should decide in a referendum.

I simply say to this House, of which I am very fond, that this is essentially an advisory House; the public are not an advisory public. The public have made their decision. I say to my friends in this House—I would say it to my friends at the other end, among whom I see no appetite whatever for another referendum—that it really is not our job to thwart the will of the British people.

European Union

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd February 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My noble friend is absolutely right. The British public will be facing the greatest decision they have had to make in a generation, and it is right that Parliament retains its approach of careful scrutiny, which is a model in this House, through the European Union Scrutiny Committee. My right honourable friend David Lidington said that he has written to the chairs of the European Union Select Committees of each House, and he will provide them with that letter before Friday. I understand he is also offering to send a memorandum of explanation so that they can better reach their own decisions. All papers have been deposited for scrutiny—not just partially but all of them—so that we may have the measured debate my noble friend calls for.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

As these negotiations continue seemingly interminably towards a conclusion we all know—the Prime Minister declaring that he has achieved a triumph in his renegotiations and will be recommending a “remain” vote—is not one thing obvious to any neutral observer? It really is bizarre that the leader of a sovereign state—our Prime Minister—in order to make a relatively minor change in our social security system, should require the agreement of 27 other leaders of sovereign states. It sounds a bit like a sledgehammer to crack a nut.

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, as the noble Lord knows—for some years, he was Chief Whip in this House—the European Union has rules to which we all adhere if we are to enjoy the benefits of membership. When we discuss the details of the proposals, I have no doubt that noble Lords will take different views about the benefits. Clearly, great steps forward have been made. We will have the opportunity to discuss that.

Palestine

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Monday 1st February 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, all those who have the interests of peace at heart will want to bring together the sides that disagree to negotiate. I notice that, just recently, Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon made the following comment,

“as we continue to uphold the right of Palestinians to self-determination, let us be equally firm that incitement has no place, and that questioning the right of Israel to exist cannot be tolerated”.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords, we all like the language of a negotiated solution, and sooner or later that is what must happen. But does the Minister agree that there is an increasingly uncomfortable comparison between the way in which the international community responds when Russia is involved in breaches of international law by violating its boundary with its neighbouring country and the response of the international community towards Israel, which for more than 50 years has violated international law by the occupation of a neighbouring country, by the building of a wall and by the continuing illegal occupation that makes a two-state solution nearly impossible? Is it not time that we had a more robust response to these flagrant breaches of international law?

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, the noble Lord is right to point out that the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories flouts international law. We have made that clear in the past. We have urged Israel to obey the law and have pointed out that it should withdraw. The position that Israel takes on occupying Palestinian territories makes it more difficult to achieve the two-state solution that we wish to see.

European Union Referendum Bill

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Monday 23rd November 2015 Lords Chamber

That is a procedural fact. Whether one party or the other in the national debate wants to draw attention to it—

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

Of course, my noble friend is quite right that these measures could be repealed, but they could also be extended and improved on by a British Government. If we are looking for good conditions for people at work, I would say that a huge advance in recent years was that wonderful national minimum wage introduced not by the EU but by the last Labour Government. Ultimately, the terms and conditions of people at work about whom he and I care most passionately are better protected by a Labour Government in Britain than by any decision in Brussels.

[Lord Lea of Crondall]

I have the highest respect for my noble friend but I am afraid that on this one he is wrong. In international trade, employers will claim we are at a competitive disadvantage if we do not do things together. This is what Europe is about. That is what Delors pointed out in Bournemouth in 1988.

If we were to say to an employer in Holland, Italy or Spain, “You can lead the race to the bottom”, all the employers, one by one, would scream that they had to go in that direction. I will be calling for a European identity card the way I am going, but if we had a floor for all European workers in all these areas, the comparison with the minimum wage—although we do not have a European minimum wage—would be valid in that all workers and employers would be protected. If noble Lords will allow me to conceptualise, we will have a European ring-fence—let us not start getting into the argument about competition with China or Japan; it is a good argument but quite different from the one we are considering at the moment. This is for the parties in the referendum debate to discuss, and they are valid points to discuss.

Another factor that will determine how Brexit would work would be, no doubt, the majority in the country and the state of agitation on how best to progress matters on the Back Benches of the Conservative Party—and indeed, the Labour Party, the Liberal Democrats and everybody else in the House of Commons. To get to the nub of the point for this debate, and maybe to add some value to what I am about to say, we have a difficulty which would have been avoided if we had followed what we called in an earlier debate the OBR-type of authorship because all these amendments look to HMG to produce these studies. How will Ministers avoid the charge of cherry picking, as and when they deal with what are, with good will all round—and there will not be an oversupply of that—difficult analytical distinctions between things that we know and things that are going to be debated?

In conclusion, I will try to answer my own question.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 24C to which I have put my name. I would like to thank the Minister for listening, as the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, said and for reflecting the views put forward at all stages of the Bill’s passage through this House.

Listening to the noble Lord, Lord Owen, I am slightly at a loss because last week we discussed the franchise at some length and voted on it and today we are thinking about reports and paragraph (a) of subsection (1) of the proposed new clause, to which the noble Lord referred, relates to Government Amendment 24B, not to an amendment which is being proposed by Back-Benchers or others.

I want to speak to parts of Amendment 24C. Most of the concerns that I raised at Second Reading about the need for reports have been answered by government Amendment 24B in terms of outlining what alternatives to membership might mean. It is important that we have objective information. I hear from both sides of the House—from the noble Lords, Lord Hamilton and Lord Pearson of Rannoch—that Amendment 24C is somehow trying to put forward things that pro-Europeans want to hear about. However, if the information that is being asked for is objective and membership of the European Union is bad for the economy, a report will make that clear. There is nothing in Amendment 24C that says that the report should outline the “benefits of” or the “disbenefits of”; it merely refers to the “effects of”, so it would be helpful if noble Lords took the wording of the amendment at face value. Some of us who are still very new to your Lordships’ House have put our names to amendments because we believe that they will improve the quality of debate and the information that is available to citizens.

I turn to paragraphs (b) (c) and (d) of Amendment 24C on the rights of EU citizens in the UK and UK nationals resident in other member states. If the vote is to withdraw, there will clearly be implications for those citizens, which was one of the reasons we discussed at some length whether those people should be enfranchised. Will the Minister confirm that issues about the rights of citizens resident here and in the other EU states will be taken into consideration by the Government under Amendment 24B and, in particular, will she focus on the relationship with Ireland? In Committee, my noble friend Lord Wallace and I raised this issue in an amendment, which was withdrawn. Clearly in addition to discussions with the devolved Administration of Northern Ireland, it is important for the Her Majesty’s Government to think about the implications for the relationship of the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland in the case of withdrawal. It is not simply a matter for the devolved Administration; it is a matter for two sovereign countries. The other devolved Administrations would not be affected in quite the same way.

[Lord Grocott]

I do not think there is any disagreement about the need to provide precise factual information so that people can make the judgment that they will have make when the referendum is called. That is clearly a benefit. The difficulty that arises—it is pretty obvious to me and I hope I can convince any doubters that it ought to be to all of us—is in determining what is factual, unarguable, objective information and what is a matter of judgment.

Looking at the amendments, I can certainly give an example of what is factual and what is not. For example, government Amendment 24B—leaving aside just for a moment the doubts of the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, about which countries might be included—is close to a factual requirement,

“examples of countries that do not have membership of the European Union but do have other arrangements with the European Union (describing, in the case of each country given as an example, those arrangements).”

Admittedly, the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, made me waver a bit when I heard his comments. There is deep uncertainty as to precisely which countries would be covered by this—perhaps the Minister will answer that point in her reply—but if you gave that to 10 top civil servants and said, “Right, you have to draw up these facts, these details, on this precise point”, they would roughly be in the same territory. They would spell out what deal Norway had got, what deal Switzerland had got and so on.

By complete contrast, I have to disagree with the Liberal Front Bench strongly over the idea that Amendment 24C, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, involves a kind of clear, objective and unarguable description about the consequences of withdrawal. The game is given away in the language of the very first line of the amendment:

“The report shall cover the possible consequences of withdrawal”.

The term “possible consequences” contains within itself the possibility of different considerations that need to be brought into account in the event of withdrawal. The language of the amendment itself admits the possibility of debate, discussion and uncertainty. I am not a lawyer, but if that ever passed on to the statute book and 10 civil servants were asked to give a precise answer on those points, they would come up with 10 different solutions.

I will complete that point by including one particularly contentious example. I mentioned this in Committee but make absolutely no apology for mentioning it again. Amendment 24C says:

“The report shall cover the possible consequences of withdrawal from the European Union, including information on the effects of withdrawal upon … (g) the provision of financial support for agriculture in each region of the United Kingdom”.

Does that or does that not include a consideration of what support agriculture would get in the event of withdrawal from the common agricultural policy? In my book, of course that would be a possible consequence of leaving the European Union: there would be subventions from the British Treasury to British agriculture. The levels of that would be unknown, but it is a fair bet in my book that they would at least be equal to the colossal sums that we contribute to the common agricultural policy under the present arrangements. Whether I am right or wrong does not really matter: all I am saying is that the language of the amendment itself means that that is inevitably the kind of debate that would take place. Clearly, you cannot talk about the possible consequences of withdrawal from the CAP without giving some consideration to what sort of support would come from a country that was outside the EU. In trying to pretend that that is a kind of objective consideration, the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, must allow himself a little smile.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

I am not smiling very much. As I explained in Committee, that was not the intention of the people moving these sorts of amendments. We wish to have a factual, objective statement of the consequences of withdrawal. I noticed with some pleasure that when the Minister opened the debate this afternoon, she included a recognition that there would need to be, in the paper provided under Amendment 24B, some consideration of that matter. I never suggested—and I twice replied to the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, on this point in Committee—that we should go into the speculative area of what the Government might do to replace the common agricultural policy, which would have been withdrawn from British farmers. I am sorry, but the noble Lord is simply barking up the wrong tree. There is therefore no difference between us and no difference with the Minister. This is important information. It was not intended to enter the speculative realm of what would replace it.

[Lord Grocott]

In that case, the noble Lord really should have put down a different amendment. In my book, possible consequences means possible consequences. Possible consequences of withdrawal from one organisation will include what will happen to the beneficiaries, if that is the right word, of the common agricultural policy in the event of withdrawal. If there is no possibility of uncertainty, remove “possible” from the amendment. The noble Lord has to defend his amendment as written. In any conversation interpreting the meaning of the amendment as written, there would be any number of possible—I use the word myself again—ways in which the consequences of withdrawal could be written.

I think that the noble Lord will be frank enough, as am I, to admit that he does not come from a completely neutral position. If he thought that his amendment would result in a large number of statements and heavy tracts one or two inches thick pointing out what disastrous consequences there would be for Britain if it remained within the European Union, I am quite sure that he would not have put the amendment down. He has put the amendment down precisely because it is consistent with his perfectly sincerely held view—and we know that almost irrespective of what the Prime Minister brings back he will be voting to stay. I just find it unacceptable in terms of the language.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

I am sorry, but I really must reply to this point about possible consequences. If I had put “consequences” without “possible” that would have entered the speculative realm because it would have needed to bring in what was done to replace the common agricultural policy. By putting “possible consequences” it merely stays in the factual realm—what will be removed from the British agricultural sector if we were to leave. It does not enter into the conjectural area of what would replace it. That was the reason for the wording.

[Lord Grocott]

I think actually it is much clearer from the noble Lord’s perspective if he says “consequences” and does not put “possible”. I think we are beginning to dance on pinheads now, but test it out in the pub. What are the possible consequences of you not paying for your pint? There are a whole range of possible consequences. Anyone who is asked might say: you might go to prison; it might result in a fight. Any number of consequences are possible from an objective fact. The objective fact, which is acknowledged, would be withdrawal from the common agricultural policy. I am simply putting to the noble Lord that with “possible consequences” the language itself implies that there could be lots of different interpretations. I put it no stronger than that.

[Lord Lamont of Lerwick]

My Lords, I would like to speak, as the noble Lord, Lord Owen, did, rather generally about the whole series of amendment that have been put down. I have been rather struck by the plethora of different reports demanded. My memory went back to the repeated demands that the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, used to make of successive Administrations that they should have a publication stating the advantages of being in the European Union. Year after year, Administration after Administration—I do not know whether the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, was one of the people answering the PQs that the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, put down—the reply always came back, no, they would not publish any evaluation of our membership. It was never clear whether this was because they thought it was self-evident or, as I also suspect, because there is an element of greyness. The truth is never precise. I think what is wrong in so many of the assessments that have been asked for is that, actually, one cannot always give a precise factual answer.

For example, take the case of membership of the EEA, the European Economic Area, to which Norway belongs. Some people would say you have to accept all the regulations just the way they are imposed—it is government by fax. Actually when you look into it in real detail, it is not like that at all. It is a very complicated procedure and it is not quite true to say that a country such as Norway has to accept the laws it is given, let alone just by fax. First, there is a very elaborate machinery before laws are formulated. Secondly, when laws are formulated, the EEA countries have a right to reject legislation—they have a veto—something that we inside the European Union do not. The noble Baroness shakes her head. I am very willing to give way to her if she disagrees with me.

Palestine: Recognition

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Wednesday 15th October 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, I understand my noble friend’s strength of feeling. I also understand that there is a lot of public concern and, indeed, more than interest—rather, engagement—in all of this. However, one has to say that the Middle East process itself has not failed; it proceeds. Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Abbas continue to say that they are committed to a two-state solution. That is the way forward, whereas this country recognising Palestine now would not achieve anything. It would not remove the occupation or give everyone the opportunity to do what we need to do now, which is to focus on the people of Gaza and the rebuilding of it.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Baroness Deech (CB)]

My Lords—

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, the noble Baroness makes an interesting point, but it would depend on the way in which the future state were created, so I think that there is more complexity to the issue than she raised.

[Lord Grocott]

My Lords, several noble Lords have referred to the—

[Baroness Eaton (Con)]

My Lords—

[The Lord Privy Seal (Baroness Stowell of Beeston) (Con)]

My Lords, I am sorry to interrupt from the Dispatch Box again. If noble Lords are very brief, we can hear from the noble Lord on the Labour Benches and then from my noble friend.

[Lord Grocott]

My Lords, various references to the problem of recognising a Palestinian state indicated that it would somehow inhibit the peace process. I ask: what peace process? What achievements can be chalked up to this alleged peace process? All we have seen from the process over the past 50 years is a continued diminution of the prospect of a Palestinian state because of the constant settlement activity in violation of all international law which the Israeli Government seem to be able to pursue with impunity.

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, the developments with regard to settlements clearly have lost Israel many of its friends and it has a duty to rebuild trust by looking again at its policy on settlements. However, I do not agree with the noble Lord that we should give up hope on the Middle East peace process. As I said in answer to another noble Lord, the two main actors in this process wish to be engaged in it and will be engaged in it—and we will encourage them to do that.

Ukraine

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Tuesday 13th May 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Warsi]

My noble friend makes an important point; she knows that this funding was cut back in 2011, and of course matters have changed since then. This matter should be kept under review. The decision made by the BBC will be editorially independent, but in light of how much of this conflict appears to be about a war of words and misinformation we should certainly consider the matter.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords, I agree with the Minister’s assertion that the referendums that were held in the east of Ukraine were clearly deeply flawed, and would not pass any normal test of a free and fair election. But I am troubled by the implication of much of what she said, that somehow the feelings in eastern Ukraine and in Crimea are entirely an anxiety manufactured by Russian foreign policy, and that they bear no relation whatever to the real feelings of the people in the area. I put it to her that we are all democrats; we all respect the judgment of the people. Is it really the position of Her Majesty’s Government that whatever the views expressed by people in eastern Ukraine and in Crimea on separation, devolution or independence and whatever their judgment is, these people must remain within the present boundaries of Ukraine under the present constitutional arrangements there? I ask this, of course, with the background of a referendum shortly to take place in part of the United Kingdom about its future boundaries.

[Baroness Warsi]

I sincerely hope that that was not the impression that I gave. If I did, I apologise; it was not how I intended it. From the outset of this crisis, we spoke about making sure that the legitimate concerns of the Ukrainian people, who were raising concerns about minority rights and language, and about decentralisation and much more localised governance, were taken into consideration. This formed the basis of the Geneva agreement, and we have put money into making sure that that is the kind of work that the Ukrainians have started and put in place. Alongside that, the commitments made by Russia too need to be fulfilled and we see no progress on that.

Israel and Palestine

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Monday 24th March 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Warsi]

I thank my noble friend for that question. She comes to these matters with great expertise. She has asked a number of questions—not only Oral Questions but Written Questions—on a regular basis. I can assure her that we take these matters incredibly seriously. There has been a worrying increase in violence in the West Bank. In 2012, nine civilians were killed; in 2013, 27 civilians were killed; and the number of civilians who have been injured is also on the increase. Last week I raised these matters with our officials and only yesterday—Sunday— our ambassador spoke with the national security adviser and again put our concerns before him.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords, it is true, is it not, that in recent weeks the international community has taken a dim view of the occupation of one country by a neighbouring country and that this has led, quite properly, to a flurry of international activity, reference and the activation of sanctions? Yet, given that this question quite rightly refers to occupied territories which have been occupied now for more than 40 years, am I right in thinking that that there is no sense whatever of the same level of urgency and commitment being given to liberating these occupied territories as there is when similar events occur in other parts of the world?

[Baroness Warsi]

It is important that I try to focus on this Question. I understand why people try to read across to other matters, but successive government policies on the Occupied Palestinian Territories have been clear. Successive government policies about the two-state solution based on the 1967 borders, with agreed land swaps and a settlement for refugees in Jerusalem as a shared capital, have been the same. There is a Kerry framework agreement on which we hope progress will be made and we hope that that will be done by around the end of April. We are supporting and continue to support that, and we hope that it will yield some positive results.

European Union (Referendum) Bill

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Friday 10th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords, whatever one’s views on the merits of the Bill—I shall come to those in a moment—I hope we can agree on one point, which is that, as a parliamentary occasion, this has certain “Alice in Wonderland” characteristics. I just remind Members of the origins of this Private Member’s Bill, which were as follows. At each stage I feel we probably need another chapter of Erskine May.

First, it was a Bill that the Prime Minister wanted to include in the Queen’s Speech but felt that he did not have the parliamentary strength to do so. Normally, if Prime Ministers—certainly Prime Ministers I have known and, I dare say, most other people—want a Bill in the Queen’s Speech, they tend to get that Bill in the Queen’s Speech. They have various mechanisms that they can deploy to achieve this. However, of course it did not go into the Queen’s Speech because the Minister in charge of constitutional affairs—heaven help us—who is the Deputy Prime Minister, decided that it should not be in the Queen’s Speech because he was opposed to legislating for an “in or out” referendum on our membership of the European Union. He is also, of course, the only party leader who fought the previous election on a manifesto commitment to do that. So the strangeness develops as we go along this journey.

We then have what I can only describe as a slightly humiliating process whereby the Prime Minister keeps all his fingers crossed that one Back-Bencher will be successful in the private Members’ ballot and he can persuade that Back-Bencher to introduce the Bill that he himself could not introduce. It then gets stranger. As the Bill proceeds through the House of Commons, a heavy three-line Whip is imposed on the Conservative Party to vote in favour of the Bill.

If I were being generous I would say, “I’m sympathetic to the Prime Minister because it’s a coalition—we’re in a funny old game at the moment—and maybe he can be excused for this”. But of course the truth is that he has been hoist with his own petard, because what should normally happen in a situation like this is that the Prime Minister should say, “I can’t do what I think is in the national interest to do. Therefore I will call a general election and see whether the public agree with me or not”. That option has, however, been removed by one part of the constitutional vandalism of this Government, which is that they passed the Fixed-term Parliaments Act. The noble Lord, Lord Armstrong, said at Second Reading—he can reread that speech with pleasure—that the problem with that is that it puts Prime Ministers and Governments into a straitjacket. That, of course, is where we see ourselves today. So those characteristics make this situation very unusual if not unique.

As for the principle of a referendum, I have no problem whatever with the principle of an “in or out” referendum on our membership of the European Union. I would be surprised if there were many people in my dear old party who have an objection in principle to that. It was, after all, a Labour Government who introduced what at that time was a brand-new constitutional device: in 1975 we introduced a Bill on which many of us voted, one way or another, and we had our first ever referendum. That is the correct thing to do for a matter of constitutional significance of this kind. For accuracy, I should record that I voted no in that referendum, and I may say that I have never been persuaded subsequently that I made a colossal error of judgment. Indeed, at the very least, had the public followed the same direction as I did, we would be able to be home today instead of debating this Bill.

So I do not have any problem with the principle whatever. However, I do have a great problem—this was the constitutional point that the noble Lord, Lord Turnbull, made—with the notion of this Parliament telling the next Parliament what to do. That point is fundamental, and it is particularly so. We have heard several people ask, “What does this House of Lords have to do with telling that House of Commons whether it should or should not go ahead with a piece of legislation?”. My answer is that this House of Commons should not be telling the next House of Commons what it should be doing. That is particularly true as we are nearly in the fifth year of this Parliament—we come back to that wretched Fixed-term Parliaments Act again—so many people down the other end will either not be standing at the next election or, please God, a few of them on the government Benches will not be back and will be spending more time with their families.

So that is where we are in respect of one Parliament trying to bounce the next. That is my answer to all those who say—and several speakers have said it—that the right thing to do is to put this to the people and that that is the democratic thing to do. It is not democratic for a Parliament elected in 2010, in what is nearly its fag-end year, to tell a Parliament that will be elected in 2015 what it should do in 2017. That is a matter for that Parliament to decide, not this one. We should have no concern, anxiety or sense of embarrassment about saying that this is something on which we should cave in to the Commons.

In particular—I will make this very brief procedural point—it really would contort our procedures in this House to get this Bill back to the House of Commons by 28 February, which is what the procedures would require us to do. We have to have gaps between Second Reading and Committee, between Committee and Report and between Report and Third Reading, and if there are any amendments, they will all have to be dealt with by 28 February. You would never do that with a constitutional Bill, or with a Bill with constitutional implications of this sort.

I conclude by saying that I am not opposed to a referendum in principle at all, but we should look in the history books. The right way to do this is the way in which the dear old Labour Party did it in 1974. It fought a general election with a commitment to a referendum in its manifesto and it carried out its manifesto commitment. If that is what the Labour Party decides, then it will be in the Labour Party manifesto. That is the procedure that the Conservative Party, I respectfully suggest, ought to adopt. That should be enough. That is the correct way to proceed, not the way that is being recommended by the Bill.

Referendum: European Union

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Monday 29th July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Warsi]

I am glad the noble Lord has got that off his chest. He will recollect that the amount of support the Government had in relation to that particular opt-out was clear in relation to the majorities in both Houses.

[Lord Grocott]

Am I right in my understanding of the Prime Minister’s position on the European referendum? In the event of there being a Conservative victory at the next election, he will hold a referendum that will be based on negotiations which he will have conducted and, when he has completed those negotiations, he will recommend a yes vote. If I am wrong in that assumption, can the Minister explain the basis on which the Prime Minister would recommend a no vote?

[Baroness Warsi]

The Government’s position is very clear: there will not be a referendum before the next election. The Conservative Party has made its position entirely clear. The noble Lord understands that there will be a period of negotiation and then we will go to the country and ask people to vote. What would be interesting for these Benches and the country to hear is what the Labour Party’s position is. We believe that the country should be allowed a vote and a decision. I would like to hear what the Labour Party thinks.