Middle East

Lord Purvis of Tweed Excerpts

Monday 1st September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister very much indeed for repeating that extremely important Statement. I want to start by expressing my sympathy for the people of Afghanistan, much benighted over the years, who have now been affected by last night’s earthquake; I am sure we are all thinking of them.

I agree with the Minister that the ongoing conflict in Gaza is awful. It has claimed too many lives already, and I know that noble Lords across the House share our desire to see a peaceful resolution to the conflict and the resumption of work towards a sustainable peace based on a two-state solution. Hamas is still refusing to release the hostages, who have been in captivity in Gaza now for coming up to 700 days. This is an appalling situation and the Government must redouble their calls for the release of the hostages, which I know they did again today. Will the Minister please update the House on the Government’s work to influence that situation and help to secure both the release of the 48 hostages who remain in captivity and the urgent delivery of more aid into Gaza? Hamas is a terrorist organisation and we must all work together with our international partners to prevent it having any role in the future governance of Palestine. As the Government embark on the path to recognition, will the Minister tell us what engagement Ministers have had with international partners on a plan to end Hamas’s role?

Turning to the humanitarian situation in Gaza, again I think all noble Lords will agree that the situation is dire. We all want to see a sustainable resolution of the conflict as soon as practically possible. We also need to see more humanitarian aid delivered to innocent civilians in Gaza. Can the Minister confirm what practical steps the Government have taken to help unblock the situation so that more aid can get into Gaza?

On Palestinian recognition, it is disappointing that Ministers conveniently chose to announce this major change to UK foreign policy shortly after the House broke for the Summer Recess, meaning that we did not have the opportunity to ask immediate questions of Ministers at the time. This afternoon at Oral Questions, the noble Baroness refused to answer my question on the Montevideo convention, so let me give her another opportunity. This sets out the international law criteria for state recognition, which include a defined territory, a permanent population, a functioning Government and the capacity to enter into international relations. I ask her again, specifically, which of these Montevideo criteria are fulfilled by the state of Palestine that the Government are about to recognise? Will this recognition apply just to the West Bank, under the control of the Palestinian Authority, or will it also apply to Gaza, nominally, of course, still under the control of Hamas? The Government often tell us that they are bound by international law, so it would be very useful to know what work the Government have done to establish whether Palestine meets these criteria under international law.

There is an unfathomable asymmetry in the demands being made by the Government. Will the Minister please give the House total clarity on this point? Will the Government proceed with the recognition of Palestine while hostages are still being held by Hamas? Bizarrely, the Government’s current recognition plan seems to be being pursued purely as some sort of punishment of Israel. The PM has made lots of demands of Israel but none of Hamas, which has predictably welcomed Labour’s plans and the actions of which, of course, were the cause of the current conflict. Recognition must not happen while hostages remain in captivity. The Government’s current plans will neither secure the release of the hostages nor increase the amount of aid getting into Gaza. It seems to be pure gesture politics designed to appease Labour Back-Benchers in the other place.

Earlier today, in a response at Oral Questions, the Minister quoted a figure of 2,000 Gazans being killed while queuing for food aid at GHF distribution points. Will she please clarify the source of that number? I hope that she has a more reliable source of information than relying purely on Hamas.

Finally, I would like to raise the conduct of the Iranian regime. Tehran must never obtain a nuclear weapon. Can the Minister provide an update on the Government’s current assessment of Iran’s nuclear capabilities?

[Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)]

My Lords, I too thank the Minister for repeating the Statement. Since this is my first occasion to speak in the Chamber since my predecessor, my noble friend Lord Newby, retired as leader of our group, I put on record my appreciation to him and express how much all of us on these Benches admired how, in tumultuous and ultimately successful times, he led us for the most recent nine years.

While this Statement is justifiably focused on the terrible humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza and the inhumane treatment of the Israeli hostages, I put on record my dismay that the world’s worst humanitarian crisis—worse than Ukraine and Gaza combined—carries on in Sudan. One hundred Sudanese civilians have died today of hunger. I hope the Government will bring forward a Statement, as penholder in the Security Council for Sudan, with an update soon.

Now there is famine in Gaza too. Avoidable, manmade famine should have been an impossibility in 2025. Manmade means deliberate. It means that women and children are dying of hunger primarily as a result of the political and military decisions of men, increasingly detached from the humanitarian needs of civilians. In Gaza, the provision of wholly inadequate supplies of food from the GHF has become a killing zone, and the IDF operations in Gaza now mean that there is no safe area. Indeed, the most dangerous areas are those that have been defined as safe. The casualty levels pay testament to this. The images of the emaciated hostages treated so brutally by Hamas terrorists were responded to by the families of the Hostages and Missing Families Forum so powerfully and movingly, as they also speak of their opposition to the continuation of the violence and the tactics of the Netanyahu Government.

The Minister knows, because I have stated it on many occasions, that these Benches have called for the recognition of Palestine as a state for 45 years—17 years before Hamas was formed, so it cannot possibly be close to being seen as a reward for its actions. We welcome the position of the Government but did not share the conditionality, which was out of the hands of the Palestinians. That said, recognition could come in less than three weeks, but the Government must now indicate that the conditions they have set are not being met.

Indeed, the recent statements by Netanyahu mean that it is impossible they will be met. He and the extreme Ministers in his Government are moving to expand military campaigns in civilian areas, illegally expand territory and widen the area for settlements in the West Bank. If the UK recognises Palestine, as we hope it will, it must surely be honoured as an act that is vital, urgent and needed to prevent the 1967 borders from being reduced and removed altogether. Bulldozing and occupying civilian areas in that border area is a war crime. Collective punishment is a war crime. Weaponising food and medicines is a war crime.

That is why we believe that the UK should sanction these extreme Ministers and Netanyahu, that there should be no arms sales to the Israeli Government at all and that the Government should now conduct and publish an urgent human rights assessment, as allowed for in the UK-Israel trade and partnership agreement. The grim reality is that, unless there are specific, deliberate and measurable interventions, eloquent statements and diplomacy will not be an effective means to end the suffering and it will continue. The civilians who are starving should not have to wait.

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

I thank both noble Lords for their contributions. I thank particularly the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, for reminding us of the situation in Afghanistan. He is right about the plight of people there, and I expect we will make further comments on this in the next few days. As he asked me to do, I am very happy to redouble and never stop calling for the immediate release of those hostages, who should be returned today and who were so cruelly and barbarically removed from their families, as well as for the return, tragically, of the bodies of some of those who were taken. I met the hostage families and made them a promise that I would continue to do that. I am very happy to do so until the day that they are all home, where they belong.

Hamas’s role should end. Hamas is a terrorist organisation. It should have no role in the future administration of Palestine. When we are asked our view on this and about why we are working with the Palestinian Authority, our view very strongly is that it is essential that there is a group of leaders able to administer and lead responsibly in a Palestinian state. If you do not believe that, you do not truly believe in the viability of a two-state solution, and this Government do believe in that.

When it comes to aid, we have spent just over £200 million in the last period on aid. We will continue to do that. We made more announcements over the weekend of some specific commitments on maternity care. I remind noble Lords there are still 120 babies being born each day in Gaza. I cannot imagine the difficulty of giving birth in such circumstances, particularly without medical assistance, including anaesthetics. That is the situation we are in, and we will continue to provide aid for as long as that is necessary. The difficulty, as noble Lords understand, I think, is that there remain obstacles to getting aid to where it is so desperately needed. We continue to call for and encourage the movement of that aid.

On the timing of the announcement on recognition, yes, that did happen once we had risen for Summer Recess, but it was an announcement not of recognition itself but of an intention to recognise in a certain situation at the end of September. So it was known that there would be opportunity for us to debate that. I regret that we have had to get to this position at all. I have stood here many times and said that recognition should be part of the peace process. I had hoped that recognition could take place in far more positive circumstances, as part of a negotiation, perhaps. That is not where we are; recognition is not taking place against that backdrop. We will make an announcement on the basis of international law if the time comes, as seems increasingly likely. But Hamas does not want a two-state solution. It is not going to want to listen to our conditions; it is not interested in peace; it is a terrorist organisation. Our recognition of that is something that I know the noble Lord shares, so it seems a little odd to ask us why we are not having some sort of dialogue with Hamas.

On the source of data, I accept we do not have sufficient data to be able to make the kinds of assessments that we would want to in other circumstances. It is not good enough that we are relying on the information that we are; it should be better. But the ability to have more accurate information, to have third-party corroboration and to have journalists able to report is prevented by the decision of the Government of Israel. It leads us to rely on the information that I know the noble Lord finds so unsatisfactory. This could be remedied and I only wish that it could be.

I echo what the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, said about the noble Lord, Lord Newby. It was good to hear him make those remarks, and obviously we wish him well in his new role, with his new look, I see, this evening. I am glad too that he talked about Sudan because, as he rightly says, that is by far the biggest humanitarian crisis on the planet at the moment and shows little sign of improvement. I was on the border there myself earlier this year, and the situation there and the accounts that we are hearing are desperate. We have taken the decision to protect our aid to Sudan and his suggestion that we should make some sort of statement as to our assessment of the current situation is very helpful. I will take that back.

We have long said that we believe that we ought to recognise the state of Palestine. The noble Lord asked why it is happening now and about conditionality. As I say, we feel that if we do not do this now, the whole concept of a two-state solution becomes jeopardised, given the situation on the ground.

I agree as well that the futility of these statements is becoming increasingly sickening and I only wish that there was more that we could do that would have an effect on the ground. I deeply regret that our words are not heeded or listened to sufficiently by the Government of Israel, but that does not mean that we do not use our voice when we can to say what we think is right, and that is what this Government intend to continue to do.