Foreign Affairs and International Development

Alex Cunningham Excerpts

Tuesday 15th May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hague]

I will give way in a moment, because I just want to elaborate on the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton North (Michael Ellis) raised.

Not only is that a reversal of the overall policy of the previous Government, who closed 17 high commissions and embassies, but in some instances we are reopening embassies and high commissions that they closed.

[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)]

Will the Foreign Secretary give way?

[Mr Hague]

No. I want to list them to the House.

In Africa we have reopened an embassy in Côte d’Ivoire and opened a new embassy in South Sudan; we are reopening our embassy in Madagascar, which should never have been closed; we are opening an embassy in Liberia; and we have set aside funds to open an embassy in Somalia as soon as circumstances permit. We have opened a new embassy in strategically important Kyrgyzstan, and we are establishing a new honorary consul network for economic and commercial diplomacy in Turkey.

In Latin America we have already opened a new consulate in the north of Brazil; we are reopening our embassy in El Salvador, which was closed in 2003; and on top of that we are strengthening many links with the people of Latin America, with an agreement for example to welcome 10,000 Brazilian students and researchers to British institutions by 2014. I stress that this focus on stronger ties in Latin America goes hand in hand with our absolute commitment to the rights of the people of the Falkland Islands to self-determination and to develop their own economy.

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[Alex Cunningham]

The expansion of the diplomatic network is important and welcome, but does the Foreign Secretary agree that businesses in the illegal settlements on the west bank should not have European Union grants in any shape or form, and that diplomats should be working to stop them?

[Mr Hague]

I will come to the middle east peace process later in my speech, but at the EU Foreign Affairs Council yesterday, we issued an important new and detailed statement about our approach to the two settlements, in particular. I will come back to that, but perhaps I will take the intervention of my hon. Friend the Member for Elmet and Rothwell (Alec Shelbrooke) on this point.

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[Mr Alexander]

I am not familiar with the specific case of which my hon. Friend speaks, but I am clear that I do not regard boycotts on the basis of nationality as in any way constructive or helpful in achieving the two-state solution that we all want to see. That, in part, informed the position we took on the issue of universal jurisdiction when it came before the House, because surely we cannot be in a position in which those parties that are committed to a two-state solution are physically barred from countries and so are unable to enter them and facilitate that dialogue and those discussions. I will be very clear that those who continue to argue that the way forward is to seek to isolate and somehow delegitimise the state of Israel, whatever political party or organisation in the United Kingdom they are in, do a disservice to the pursuit of peace, and the absence of hope about those negotiations is one of the greatest threats to seeing and securing them.

[Alex Cunningham]

When I put this question to the Foreign Secretary he dodged it and said that he would address the issue later in his speech. What is your view on the use of EU grants by businesses in the illegal settlements in the west bank? Do you not agree that those grants should be stopped once and for all?

[Mr Alexander]

rose—

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[Pauline Latham]

I thank the right hon. Lady for that intervention. She is right. Women must not go backwards. Yesterday I heard the worrying news that in northern Pakistan, which borders Afghanistan, 700 schools have been bombed and girls cannot go to school any more. We must work with Governments to try to ensure that girls get a good education, not just in Pakistan and Afghanistan, but all over the developing world.

I have been to many African countries and have found that the schools there are so badly equipped that the teachers have no resources apart from a blackboard on which to write what they can remember. I am not saying that the children are not learning, because there are some very bright children in those circumstances, but they are not getting a rounded education. Last November or December a friend of mine, the hon. Michael Bayigga-Lulume, who is a Member of Parliament in Uganda, came over to this country and saw some schools in my constituency. He was astonished at the priority that this Government and every Government in Britain have given to schools. He has been to Britain before to attend conferences in Manchester, Birmingham and London, but he has never visited real places. By going into schools, he has recognised that we set huge store by education for all our children, not just girls or boys.

Other countries do not seem to do that. They do not put the necessary investment into schools. Schools require textbooks, and in this day and age they cannot manage without computers, so developing countries need to get their infrastructure sorted out. I suggest to the Under-Secretary, who is present, and to the Secretary of State that perhaps we should set up some exemplars in situ. We should go and equip schools properly, as we would a British school, and for a specific period we should pay for the teachers who have the right skills and the right education in order to promote education in African countries or in countries such as India and Pakistan. We should help them to see what it is like to have a properly resourced school, because without education none of the students will progress to top jobs. They will be able to do ordinary jobs, but they will not be high fliers because they will not have had the opportunities that we have in this country. I suggest that we do something like that to promote education in all the countries where we have a presence.

Not only should we invest in drugs to treat HIV/AIDS and malaria, but we should consider carefully resourcing treatments for diarrhoea. Everybody knows about the HIV/AIDS and malaria drugs, but very often the health problems of young children are caused by diarrhoea. There are many other causes, but it is very cheap to treat diarrhoea in young people with rehydration salts and zinc. We should be promoting that, along with the rapid diagnostic tests that can be done out in the bush, so that the people there can get an accurate diagnosis. If we can help with the health as well as the education of the young people, they will have a much better chance of a decent future in life, with proper resources.

I am always concerned when we provide budget support. It needs careful management by DFID. If we are not careful, we provide budget support for, say, a health budget, and the country says, “Yes, we’ve agreed to spend 15% of our budget on health. Thank you, that’s 6% of it, so we have to provide only 9%.” I always thought that our 6% should be on top of the country’s 15%, not 6% less for it to spend. I would like to see Governments pushed a little more to spend up to the 15% that many countries in Africa have signed up to so that they get a better health service.

Some of the health services that we see are very poor—hospitals for young children with no sheets and no nappies. They have no decent toilets and nowhere for the staff to wash their hands. If members of staff in a hospital cannot wash their hands, they cannot provide proper hygiene. I would like to see us helping with that, but in addition to the country’s own 15%, not instead of it.

We should be pushing and helping with the skills needed for agriculture, particularly in African countries and in India, while we are still there. We should try to help keep people in the countryside, rather than all of them gravitating to the cities, which are not healthy places to live for people with no job and no home, who are running around on the streets. It is better to keep people in the countryside so that they can provide a living for themselves and make the country more self-sufficient in vegetables and fruit. Instead of only one crop, maize, there should be diversity so that the people can become self-sufficient and have better diets. All the people in African countries can have better diets, which will make them healthier, and they will have a better living by getting added value on their crops. I should like to see DFID working hard on that.

I want to mention Congo quickly. In Rwanda we saw a genocide. The same thing is happening in the Congo. Unfortunately, nobody is talking about it. Millions of people are being murdered—slaughtered—and millions of women have been raped, sometimes by members of their own family, because their own families will be killed if they do not do it.

[Alex Cunningham]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Pauline Latham]

I am sorry, but I am running out of time.

We should be doing more to help those poor women who are struggling in their own country to have a proper living. We should be pushing the UN to do far more to help them, and we should recognise that a genocide is taking place there. It is not just a little local uprising.

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[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to follow so many powerful speeches tonight, particular several in a row from my hon. Friends. I would like to address two main issues this evening: the Government’s failure to give the ultimate commitment to help the poorest in our world and the total absence of anything in the Queen’s Speech on policy affecting Israel and the Palestinians. I declare my membership of Friends of Palestine. However, I welcome the mention of Congo in the speech by the hon. Member for Mid Derbyshire (Pauline Latham) and ask the Minister whether there are plans for a flight early next month to force Congolese nationals to return to that dangerous country. I hope that that is not the case.

To return to the aid budget, it says a lot about what the Government stand for when they are happy to give a tax break to millionaires yet cannot bring themselves to commit, through a statement enshrined in the law of the land, to helping some of the poorest people in the world in the longer term––people who live in the kind of abject poverty that we cannot even begin to understand. Indeed, the Prime Minister previously said that spending money on foreign aid in a time of austerity was a sign of “moral strength” and that Britain should be proud that

“we never turn our backs on the world’s poorest”.

But in the light of the Queen’s Speech last week, when the Government failed to enshrine in law the commitment to spend 0.7% of gross national income on development assistance, the Prime Minister’s words were just further proof that they are a Government of broken promises, following such gems as

“there will be no top-down reorganization of the NHS”,

“we are all in this together”,

and

“my promise to pensioners is that we are on your side.”

I am proud that Labour made a commitment to meet the UN’s target of spending 0.7% of GNI on aid and to legislate on it by 2013, and I was pleased when that was taken on by the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats and included in the coalition agreement. I thought that surely the Government would not revoke that policy, which would prove to the country that the Tories were no longer the nasty party and that they genuinely believed in the moral duty of rich countries to help the poorest parts of the world. As the International Development Secretary said this year,

“On the whole, politicians should do what they say they are going to do”.

However, the Government now claim that a Bill to enshrine such a commitment in law cannot be introduced due to lack of parliamentary time, given their focus on the economy and, of course, the all important matter affecting the other place. That is a ridiculous notion. The Queen’s Speech did nothing to stimulate growth in the economy, nothing for young people looking for work, nothing for families whose living standards are being squeezed and nothing for small businesses that cannot get money from the bank.

Rather than telling developing nations, “Sorry, but we are simply too busy tackling the pressure issue of House of Lords reform and the accession of Croatia to the EU to provide you with proper assistance to help your citizens climb out of poverty,” a Bill committing to spend 0.7% of gross national income on aid would not and should not detract from other parliamentary business. It is supported by all three parties, would do much to show the international community that there is a genuine commitment to standing up for global social justice, and would undoubtedly increase the pressure on other countries to do more.

Legislation would also ensure that aid is maintained at an affordable level. Just as the absolute aid level may fall when Britain’s income goes down, so too should it rise when the national income goes up. As the charity ActionAid stated, legislation matters because aid needs to be around long enough to do the job. Many countries such as Ghana are now moving towards an end to dependency on aid, but that can happen only if we support them until that point. Legislation would provide the certainty that is needed for aid to be most effective.

[Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)]

Is my hon. Friend surprised that there is not enough time, bearing it in mind that we have spent weeks—no, months—without many votes at all? Surely there is time for such important legislation.

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[Alex Cunningham]

There is certainly time for such important legislation. We could get it through the House in one of those one-day things, It would not take any time at all for us to get this single commitment through the House, so I hope that the Government listen to the idea.

I want to say more about why aid is so important. No one can argue that aid is a panacea for all the developing world’s ills, but there is very strong evidence that international aid, including UK aid, is making a huge difference by helping to deliver and to scale up local efforts to save lives, educate children, develop livelihoods, stimulate growth, build democratic and fair societies and promote peace and security.

In 2009-10, UK aid ensured that 15 million people had enough food to eat and provided more than 1.5 million people with clean water, and over the next few years the UK’s contribution to the Global Alliance on Vaccines and Immunisations will ensure that 80 million children can be immunised worldwide, saving an estimated 1.4 million lives.

Indeed, as the Secretary of State for International Development himself said, British aid pays for 5 million children in developing countries to go to primary school every day, which is roughly the same number as go to primary school in Britain, yet it costs only 2.5% of what we spend here.

There is still much to be done to ensure that every child in the world can get an education, and that every family can live with dignity and access health care and services as basic as clean water and sanitation. It is still estimated that 67 million children throughout the world are not yet in primary school, and that about 1,000 women die from preventable causes related to pregnancy and child birth every day in developing countries. This is not the time to turn our backs on those who are most in need, so I appeal to the Government to do the right thing. I believe that we will spend the money, but I want it enshrined in law.

I welcome the continuing work to secure long-term peace and security in Afghanistan, but I was disappointed by the absence of a similar commitment to building peace in other parts of the middle east, although the Foreign Secretary spoke at length on such matters today. I recently led a debate in the Commons on the dire humanitarian situation in Jerusalem, and, although there was some will from the Foreign Office Minister, the issue was conspicuous by its absence from the Queen’s Speech.

Last night, I heard the Palestinian ambassador tell a packed room here at Westminster that the daily expansion of settlements and the effective removal of Palestinians from their homes in Jerusalem and the west bank are threatening any chance of a two-state solution. Time is running out, he said, yet the British Government have no clear plan for action in our own right or through our European partners.

So why take action? In 2011, more than 500 Palestinian homes, wells, rain water harvesting cisterns and other essential structures were destroyed in the west bank, including East Jerusalem, displacing more than 1,000 Palestinians. More than half of those displaced were children, for whom the loss of their home is particularly devastating, but the situation is not hopeless, and the Government can do much to help improve the Palestinian people’s quality of life and to start to build the foundations for a peaceful future. Simple but effective measures that the Government could take to develop things in that part of the world include introducing compulsory labelling for all goods so that consumers can tell at a glance whether a product is made in an illegal settlement or in Israel, ensuring that legislation allows for public bodies to exclude companies from benefiting from public contracts where those companies operate in breach of international law, and ensuring that charitable donations that benefit from tax relief do not in any way benefit illegal settlements on the west bank or in East Jerusalem.

The Government should press the EU to exclude companies from benefiting from research funding where those companies are operating in breach of international law and to end co-operation with countries on research that could have military as well as civil applications where we are not satisfied with those countries in respect of human rights, UN resolutions and international law. I urge the Government also to press the EU not to adopt with Israel the agreement on conformity assessment and acceptance of industrial products, as that would open up EU markets to Israeli goods and, in effect, represent an upgrade in EU-Israeli relations. Surely any such upgrade must be conditionally tied to respect of human rights and international law. The agreement would also allow Israel to export fresh and processed agricultural products to the EU free of customs or quota limitations. That is problematic, since it would be impossible to identify agricultural products, especially processed agricultural products, that originate from illegal settlements, and members of the public to whom I speak are keen to use their consumer power to bring about change in the region.

The omission of a commitment to aid and of comprehensive action to take some steps towards ensuring a two-state settlement for Israel and Palestinians shows a severe lack of ambition on the part of the Government. Britain does have the power to bring about change in the world and to improve the lives of the poorest and most vulnerable on the planet, and shirking our responsibility is no way to conduct a foreign policy.

Jerusalem (Humanitarian Issues)

Alex Cunningham Excerpts

Monday 26th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)]

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for this opportunity to debate humanitarian issues in Jerusalem. The debate comes in advance of the presentation of a petition to the Prime Minister supported by a wide range of organisations, including the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Amos Trust, Friends of Al Aqsa, Jews for Justice for Palestinians and Pax Christi, calling on the Government to take urgent steps to stop the Israeli Government’s gradual but relentless eradication of Palestinian life and culture in Jerusalem. The Minister will not need to take my word for it that Jerusalem is facing a political and humanitarian crisis as people are denied the basic rights of a civilised society. His own UK mission in East Jerusalem issued a joint report with European colleagues last year. They concluded that if current trends of settlement growth and home demolitions

“are not stopped as a matter of urgency, the prospect of East Jerusalem as the future capital of a Palestinian state becomes increasingly unlikely and unworkable.”

The clear and long-standing position of the European Union is that all Israeli settlements are illegal under international law, that East Jerusalem is part of the Occupied Palestinian Territories and that the annexation of East Jerusalem by Israel is illegal and not recognised by either the UK or the EU. Yet that annexation is being reinforced with the Jerusalem municipality openly stating that it does not want the Palestinian population of Jerusalem to exceed 30%. Reducing the population from 38%, where it currently stands before any natural increase, to 30% can be achieved only by resorting to ethnic engineering that would be unthinkable in a liberal democracy and would require illegal and inhumane measures. However, we all know that this mission has been under way for years.

The first of those measures being implemented is the building of the wall that allows the exclusion of tens of thousands of Palestinians born in Jerusalem from their own city. Palestinians living outside the wall but inside the city boundaries have the status of Jerusalem residents and Jerusalem taxpayers but can access the city’s services, schools, hospitals and transport system only with the greatest of difficulty, if at all. The two major checkpoints for Palestinians render movement from outside to inside the wall extremely difficult. This can mean having to wait hours to get through a checkpoint and can put hours on a person’s work or school day, reduce access to religious sites, cause severe delay for a medical appointment and cause huge disruption to economic activity.

Many Palestinian organisations and businesses have been forced to leave Jerusalem as a result, but that could probably be considered a good result by some in the Israeli authorities. The International Court of Justice has called for sections of the wall built in East Jerusalem to be dismantled, but far from dismantling the wall the Israelis are rapidly extending it. Currently, they are building a wall that will completely encircle the small community of al-Walaja on the borders of Jerusalem so that villagers will be able to get in and out of their village only through an Israeli army checkpoint. Many people have gone to al-Walaja to see the wall and speak to the villagers, but the Israeli army does its best to discourage visitors. Only this month soldiers forced 55 Harvard students back on to their bus and arrested the villager Shireen al-Araj who was showing them the wall. That was a clear attempt at intimidation.

[Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)]

Does the hon. Gentleman recognise that far from being a wall, what he is describing is a fence, a tiny proportion of which is wall? Does he recognise that the reason it was built in the first place was to prevent suicide bombers from coming into Israel on a daily basis? That is something that it fortunately has achieved.

[Alex Cunningham]

I do not really think it matters whether it is a wall that is 20 feet thick or a fence—it is a barrier to the Palestinian people going about their normal business and I do not think it should be there.

One of the most sinister ways of removing Palestinians from living in Jerusalem is the rule that Palestinians’ “centre of their life” must lie within the Israeli-defined municipal boundary of Jerusalem. This prevents many who study or work for extended periods of time from returning and enriching their city’s experience. The “centre of life” requirement is of course particularly Kafkaesque when Israelis are making it more and more difficult for Palestinians to live and work in Jerusalem because of the wall and checkpoints.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

All of Jerusalem has been ravaged by war and terrorism. I am aware that all sections of those living in Jerusalem—Jews, Muslims and Christians—have the right to live and the right to guidance and support. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that that applies to all groups of Jews and Christians as well?

[Alex Cunningham]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman that everyone should be living together in peace and harmony with the right to the same human rights within the city of Jerusalem, and I hope that one day we will get there. To finish my point, the authorities make it impossible for the centre of Palestinians’ life to be Jerusalem, and then expels them because it is not.

Furthermore, planning rules have been made to ensure that as little land as possible is available for Palestinians to build on. Fewer than 200 building permits are granted each year, even though the EU heads of mission in East Jerusalem assessed that 1,500 housing units are necessary to meet Palestinian housing need. A building permit is rare, mostly because the Israeli municipality has zoned most Palestinian areas to prevent building—according to the UN, that restriction applies in all but 13% of East Jerusalem—but even those who live in areas where building is permitted suffer years of delay and mounting costs in seeking permission to build.

Palestinians face an impossible dilemma as their family grows: do they live in squalid overcrowded conditions, move out of the city, or risk building illegally? Many take the chance of building without a permit, resulting in about 85,000 Palestinians being at risk of losing their homes. In addition, Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem are being demolished by the Israeli authorities: they demolished 670 homes between 2000 and 2008, and recently rubber-stamped the decision to demolish homes in Silwan to make way for a tourist park, which alone will make another 1,000 Palestinians homeless.

That comes at the same time as the building of illegal Jewish settlements continues unabated, forming an inner and outer ring around Jerusalem. The inner ring, home to around 200,000 settlers, combined with the wall cuts off Jerusalem from the west bank. The outer ring, home to another 100,000 settlers, further isolates the west bank from the Palestinian cities of Ramallah and Bethlehem. Moreover, settlements continue to be built on land confiscated from Palestinians. On the fringes, homes are being seized by Israeli settler groups on the pretext that the land on which they are built was once in Jewish ownership, but to which those groups have no legal entitlement.

[Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that it speaks volumes about the arrogance of the occupying power that following the UN Human Rights Council’s vote last week, by 36 votes to one, to send a delegation to investigate the illegal settlements—illegal under international law—in East Jerusalem and the west bank, the Israelis have refused to co-operate with the council, refused admission to the delegation, and indeed is considering sanctions against the Palestinian Authority for even daring to raise the matter?

[Alex Cunningham]

It is clear that the world at large wants to do something about these issues, so why will the Israelis not let people in? What do they have to hide? I want an answer to that question, too.

The inequality of treatment of Palestinians’ claims is outrageous. They are legally barred from reclaiming property in West Jerusalem that they were forced to abandon, even if they still have the title deeds and the key to the front door. To ensure that Jerusalem can become the capital of Israel and Israel only, and to try to ensure that it never becomes the shared capital with Palestinians, Israel has used planning laws, home demolitions, settlement building, the wall and insecure residency rights, even as the international community, including the UK, the EU and America, has sat back, talked and done nothing practical to stop Israel. We all know about the influence of the US and of US and European aid to Israel. Why is no one taking action that will result in change?

Let me tell the House about Raya and Issam—two people who best illustrate the injustices faced by the Palestinian people. Raya lives in Jerusalem. Her husband, Issam, lives 15 minutes’ drive from the centre of Jerusalem in a village just outside the city limits in the west bank, but he cannot visit his children’s school and could not be with Raya in hospital when she had their baby, because his village is outside the city boundary. He says:

“It’s easier for me to go on holiday to Germany than it is to visit my children's school in Jerusalem.”

When they married, Issam applied for a family unification permit, so he could live with Raya in Jerusalem. The application cost him $5,000 in lawyer's fees, but was refused on the grounds that he worked for the Palestinian Authority five years earlier. The authorities also cited the fact that he had been in jail during the first intifada 20 years ago, despite his being there only for writing slogans and waving banners. Issam’s 15-minute drive has now turned into a two-hour nightmare, involving travelling by bus to Ramallah and waiting at the notorious Qalandia checkpoint twice a day to take the children to and from school, because an Israeli settlement has blocked the route from his village to Jerusalem.

As a brief aside, there are still 4,417 Palestinian political prisoners held in Israeli jails as of January 2012, including 310 people with indefinite detention without charge or trial, 170 children, 27 elected members of the Palestinian Legislative Council, and seven women.

It is on the record, from both Houses, that the UK has “made representations” month on month, year on year, to the Israelis objecting to increased settlements and home demolitions, making it clear that these actions are unacceptable, are illegal under international law and must stop, but what we are not told is how the Israelis reply, and we are never told of any positive outcome from these conversations.

Israel is accelerating the pace of settlement expansion, demolitions, expulsions and arrests in a way that makes the two-state solution increasingly unviable. Words are not enough; actions are clearly needed, and it is vital to demonstrate that breaches of international law have consequences, not only in diplomacy, but in the wider area of political and economic agreements.

[Mike Freer (Finchley and Golders Green) (Con)]

I understand the hon. Gentleman’s concerns about the two-state solution, but does he agree that until the Hamas element of the Palestinian Authority accepts the Quartet principles, there can be no negotiated peace process?

[Alex Cunningham]

There will always be issues associated with Hamas and various other groups, but tonight we are talking about basic human rights within the city of Jerusalem and it is time that some of them were restored.

There are three sensible measures that I am calling on the Government to consider. They should insist on guarantees that products manufactured in Israeli settlements reaching the UK do not benefit from preferential treatment under the EU-Israel Association Agreement. Where there is any doubt that the goods originate from Israel’s side of the green line, they should not benefit. It is astonishing to me that not only do we not financially penalise these settlements of which we disapprove so vehemently, but as taxpayers we subsidise their activities.

[Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Alex Cunningham]

I think I have given way enough.

According to research compiled by the Norwegian Government, Elbit Systems “supplies an electronic surveillance system called Torch for the separation barrier”,

yet Elbit Systems benefits from an EU research programme, FP7, which is the EU’s main research funding project. Ahava Dead Sea Laboratories is partially owned by two illegal settlements and exploits resources from occupied territories. Ahava benefits from three FP7 European projects.

Is the Minister therefore prepared to call publicly on the European Commission to ensure that companies that aid and abet the occupation of East Jerusalem and other occupied territories are barred from benefiting from EU projects? Will the Government work to ensure that the companies are also barred from public contract tendering processes? These measures would go a good deal further to end Israel’s intransigence in East Jerusalem and the occupied territories.

Last summer I took my place with countless Palestinians and others and waited for hours to get through the Rafah crossing to enter Gaza. I saw the indignity that those people suffered waiting to get into their homeland, and once in Gaza learned of the very real challenges for everything from education to the supply of goods being faced by the Palestinian people. I toured the refugee camps and spent time with families and children living needlessly in poverty. I saw the beautiful beaches crying out for a tourist industry, and a people eager to pay their way in the world. But just like their brothers and sisters in Jerusalem, their lives are controlled by the restrictions placed on them by the Israeli nation.

I look forward to the day when I can visit Jerusalem, to make my own pilgrimage to the sites associated with my Christian faith. But the Jerusalem I want to visit is the international city that it should be, free and fair for all residents regardless of their religion or nationhood, as the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) suggested. It is time to demonstrate that we are not prepared to support or even tolerate the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from East Jerusalem, and that as a nation we in Britain will work to do something about it.

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[Mr Browne]

We of course wish both sides—if I can put it in those terms—to live in peace in harmony. That is very much the Government’s ambition. For the avoidance of doubt, I should say that the Government do not support sanctions on Israel or any attempts to delegitimise Israel, but we do want Israel to honour the undertakings that I think people across the world expect it to honour with regard to settlements.

[Alex Cunningham]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Browne]

I will give way, because it is the hon. Gentleman, but after that I wish to address more of the points he made in his speech.

[Alex Cunningham]

If nobody is going to place any sanctions on Israel for what it is doing, what can be done to bring a solution? Talk is getting us nowhere.

[Mr Browne]

I want to address some of the hon. Gentleman’s other points and will then get to that point.

The Government will continue to argue for a just outcome for all the people affected by illegal settlement construction and the confiscation of land due to the separation barrier. That includes funding from the Department for International Development to the Norwegian Refugee Council to provide legal support to communities affected by the occupation.

I want to address a couple more issues, because time is short, and then see what more time I have to accommodate the wider points that have subsequently been made. The Government remain deeply concerned about restrictions on freedom of movement between the west bank and East Jerusalem. The permit system for Palestinians to enter East Jerusalem, whether for work, education, medical treatment or religious worship, is lengthy and complicated. There are heartbreaking stories of sons and daughters unable to obtain permits in time to visit parents dying in hospital or to attend funerals of relatives. Those Palestinians who have regular permits can spend hours queuing every morning at the checkpoints. We have lobbied the Israelis hard on the issue of movement and access, and there have been some improvements on the west bank, but there is still a long way to go.

A related concern is how many Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem face the threat of losing their residency rights in a way that does not apply to Israeli residents. There are families who are forced to live apart, or forced to move to the west bank, because they cannot obtain permits to stay together. There are also concerns about reported moves by the Jerusalem municipality to change unilaterally the boundaries of the city in a way that might deprive thousands of Palestinians of their right to residency of Jerusalem.

The restrictions on movement and access, as well as on building, not only affect individual Palestinian lives but have a very harmful effect on the Palestinian economy. It is estimated that the movement and access restrictions cost the Palestinian economy as much as 85% of its GDP every year.

Palestinian State (UN Membership)

Alex Cunningham Excerpts

Tuesday 6th September 2011 Westminster Hall

[Richard Burden (Birmingham, Northfield) (Lab)]

I am very grateful, Mrs Main, to have the opportunity to debate this very important and timely issue. I thank the Minister for being with us today; I realise that since he has been in government, as Minister for Europe, this matter has not been his brief, but I know that he is well versed in it because it was part of his shadow brief. I very much hope that he will be able to give us some idea of the UK Government’s current thinking. I thank also the hon. Friends and hon. Members on both sides who are present; the level of attendance reflects the interest in the subject.

The context of this debate is the early-day motion that was tabled yesterday by my right hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley (Ann Clwyd). She wished to be with us today but unfortunately could not be. The early-day motion calls on our Government to recognise an independent Palestinian state, alongside Israel, and to support its admission to the United Nations. The early-day motion is already supported by over 40 right hon. and hon. Members, and I am sure that more will add their name in the coming days.

Time is very limited, and before I move on to the issue of Palestinian statehood, I want to say that recent weeks have given us all a timely reminder that this conflict has already claimed far too many lives. We have seen Israeli and Palestinian civilians killed, including children on the Palestinian side. At least 15 Palestinians and nine Israelis have been killed in the past few weeks, and many more have been injured. I am also concerned about reports that the Israeli military is apparently planning to train settlers in the west bank and arm them with tear gas and stun grenades, and that it is talking up confrontation around the possibility of a vote at the United Nations in a few weeks’ time. I would be grateful if the Minister briefly explained what representation the UK Government are making to the Palestinian Authority, the Israeli Government and others, to encourage them to avoid any escalation of violence or confrontation in the run-up to the UN meeting.

Every debate and I think virtually every Foreign Office questions I have attended since I have been in this place in which the subject of Palestine and Israel has come up has returned to the fact that we all support a two-state solution. Based on what we say, I think that few things have a greater degree of consensus in this House, but what the Palestinians are asking of us now, in their initiative at the United Nations, is no more and no less than for us to mean it—to do what we say. The Palestinians are not asking for anything that Israel has not demanded and had recognised by the international community for more than 60 years.

I hear opponents of recognition suggest that the recognition of Palestine as a state and its admission to full membership of the United Nations should be treated differently—that somehow it is a way of avoiding the urgent need for a negotiated settlement. I do not believe that those two things are contradictory.

[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate at such an important time. I have recently returned from a trip to the Gaza strip, where I learnt at first hand about the plight of the Palestinian people. A third of them depend on food aid, which is under threat. From talks with politicians, the United Nations and others, it appears—

[Mrs Anne Main (in the Chair)]

May I ask the hon. Gentleman to keep his remarks brief? A lot of people might make interventions.

[Alex Cunningham]

Okay. In talks that I was involved in, it was clear that the Palestinians felt that they did not have a voice. Does my hon. Friend agree that the granting of UN membership will provide them not only with that voice but with equality with others on that world stage?

[Richard Burden]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point about equality, because Israel is recognised as a full member of the United Nations and I am not aware of any state that says it should be derecognised as such. Israel has internationally recognised borders, delineated by the green line, and that has not been seen as an impediment to a negotiated settlement; indeed, in some cases recognition of Israel is seen as a precondition to a negotiated settlement. The Quartet has even suggested that individual political parties should be excluded from peace talks unless they sign up, unilaterally and in advance, to recognition of Israel.