Human Rights Protections: Palestinians

Debate between Nigel Evans and Sam Tarry

Thursday 20th April 2023 Commons Chamber

[Sam Tarry (Ilford South) (Lab)]

I commend the hon. Member for Dundee West (Chris Law) for securing this important and timely debate on human rights protections for the Palestinian people at a crucial moment in Palestinian history and, as I know from talking to my Israeli friends, at a time when many people in Israel are fearful of the dangerous political direction being taken by their own Government, who are becoming more extreme with each election. Palestinians across the occupied territories are currently subject to an explosion of violence from illegal settlers and the state-sanctioned Israeli Defence Forces alike, under what is widely seen as one of the most extreme and inflammatory Governments in Israel’s history.

I take this moment to remember the British rabbi Leo Dee, following the awful death of his wife and daughters—British nationals who lost their lives in the west bank 13 days ago. I also remember those who were injured in Tel Aviv. Every life lost in this 75-year-old conflict is to be mourned.

This year alone, 98 Palestinians, including 17 children, have been killed by Israeli forces—not by terrorists or by a semi-legitimate Government but by a Government who want to be seen to be on a par with their European, middle eastern and Mediterranean neighbours. The number is three times as many as during the same period a year ago. The UN reports that last year was the deadliest year for Palestinians in the west bank since 2005, with at least 151 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces, 35 of them children. Settler violence is also rising. Since January, the UN has recorded 260 settler attacks against Palestinians and their property, including the devastating rampage through Huwara in February that left 418 Palestinians injured.

In the past few days, I have received nearly 1,000 emails and letters from local residents in Ilford South, not just from my Muslim community but from my Jewish community and local churches, expressing their sincere concern about the abuse of Palestinians’ human rights and the horrendous violence on both sides of the conflict.

When the al-Aqsa mosque was raided and Palestinians were evicted from their homes in Sheikh Jarrah during the holy month of Ramadan in 2021, I received more than 5,000 emails from constituents expressing their concern about these illegal acts and calling for justice for the Palestinian people. Just last week, I met worshippers outside my local Islamic centre, with many telling me of their profound kinship with the Palestinian people and their deep feeling of injustice over the ongoing violence.

Churches are supporting organisations such as the Amos Trust to raise money to support people in Palestine. For people in Ilford South and in many seats like mine, this is not a remote issue on the other side of the world; it is one of the foremost issues in their minds, and it should be taken seriously and with the gravity it rightly deserves.

I first visited Palestine and Israel in 1999. I went with a group of young people from Ilford—Jews, Christians and Muslims alike. At the time, people believed that the Oslo accords might still be enacted. I have visited the Holy Land about half a dozen times over the years. I recall a time when one could sit in Ramallah, where I sat, with people from the Palestinian negotiation support unit and Israeli Knesset Members, talking about what might be enacted. I recall at that time walking through the checkpoint at Qalandia, which was just a few barbed wire stacks on the floor, and people could walk through, showing their passport. When people go through Qalandia now, all these years later, they see the size of the gun turrets, the encasement and the brutality of the occupation. It is so visceral and so wrong.

I still speak to the Israelis and Palestinians we met back in 1999, many of whom have remained friends because of that experience. I also still speak to those in my community in Ilford, and there is hope that one day this conflict could be resolved. But we need to be clear in calling out honestly what is happening in Israel and Palestine, the asymmetry of that conflict and what we can do in this country, using our foreign service and our Government, to bring real pressure for genuine change.

There are so many aspects to this, including the ever-worsening health crisis, which further compounds the situation in Palestine. According to research by Medical Aid for Palestinians, attacks and obstructions on health workers on the ground have risen exponentially, with a 290% increase in the rate of violations against Palestine Red Crescent Society medical teams. During the recent attacks on al-Aqsa, Red Crescent ambulances were fired upon by the IDF with rubber-coated steel bullets, and a paramedic was severely assaulted and injured by an Israeli soldier. In total, nine ambulances were denied access to the courtyards of al-Aqsa, preventing them from reaching the wounded inside.

In another raid in Nablus, the IDF obstructed Red Crescent ambulance crews from accessing a two-year-old girl who had heart problems and was suffering from tear gas inhalation. The ambulance crews had to rush to the child’s home, under gunfire, to reach her. Israel is supposed to be a democratic country. Is this really what people in Israel voted for—the brutality of an occupation such as this? First responders and hospitals cannot cope with the influx of fresh casualties, and that is compounded by a severe shortage of essential medicines and basic supplies, such as syringes, bandages and painkillers. These instances, and many more, are a clear violation of international humanitarian law. As an occupying power, Israel is required under the Geneva convention to ensure the adequate functioning of health services and to allow medical personnel to carry out their duties. Article 59 obliges Israel to permit the free passage of humanitarian relief and to protect, not fire upon, any such relief.

Turning closer to home, last month the Government published their 2030 road map for UK-Israel bilateral relations. The road map has been widely condemned by a host of international organisations as poorly timed and the most egregious effort to date to try to insulate the relationship between the British and Israeli Governments from anything to do with Israel’s behaviour towards the Palestinians. This is clearly unacceptable. In my view, it is a breach of the approaches of Governments of many different stripes to that conflict over the decades. Perhaps most concerning is the agreement’s rejection of the latest ICJ referral, which requests that the Court render its opinion on the legal consequences arising from Israel’s ongoing violation of the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination and its prolonged occupation, settlement and annexation, on the grounds that it undermines efforts to achieve a settlement through direct negotiations between the parties.

I have a few questions that I hope the Minister will be able to answer when he sums up. Is it the Government’s view now that the situation in Israel/Palestine should be exempt from international scrutiny and that Israel should be held to a lower standard when it comes to human rights violations against Palestinians? Although no one would expect Israel to be held to a different or higher standard, we should certainly not be granting Israel the kind of impunity that has led to the extreme behaviour exhibited in today’s Netanyahu Government.

Will the Minister also clarify whether it is still the Government’s view that this is an occupation, that the settlements are illegal, and that bilateral co-operation should not include co-operation with Israel’s illegal settlements or allow for violations of international law and Palestinian human rights? I and my constituents believe that our Government, and all of us in this House, have an historical obligation, arguably going back to the Balfour declaration, to support the creation and recognition of an independent and viable Palestinian state and to ensure that people in the Holy Land can co-exist one day on the same land. This Government must start right now by looking again at that bilateral agreement and, in my view and the view of my constituents, by formally recognising a Palestinian state.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Following Madam Deputy Speaker’s strictures, I call on Members to try to stick to seven minutes.

Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill

Debate between Nigel Evans and Sam Tarry

2nd reading
Monday 16th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Sam Tarry (Ilford South) (Lab)]

I proudly draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

It should be recorded in this House that, in our country’s history of progress, it was the trade unions that ended child labour, it was the trade unions that made workplaces safer, and it was the trade unions that gained us holidays, maternity and paternity pay, paid sick leave, equal pay legislation, pensions, workplace anti-discrimination laws, and even the weekend. The Government would do well to remember that trade unions have made an immensely positive contribution to society. A strong trade union movement is the cornerstone of any healthy, functioning democracy and a more equal, fair and prosperous society. The good news is that trade union membership is on the rise, with a net increase of 200,000 members over the past three years and online inquiries to the TUC surging by 700% this summer. Organised labour is back and it is going absolutely nowhere.

Shocking leaked emails from this Government show that Ministers are deliberating on an outright ban on trade union membership and strike action, and even introducing further restrictions on the democratic right to withdraw labour. Why might that be? Striking workers in various sectors—from bus drivers to BT engineers—have won for themselves double-digit pay rises, as well as better conditions and an end to outsourcing, while public support for strike action is at an all-time high. Many trade union leaders are more popular than any Government Minister right now, in 2023.

The Government’s own impact assessment of the Bill says that it could mean that more action is taken more frequently, as a way to pressure employers. In rail, the Bill seems particularly short-sighted and even at odds with what many train operating companies want. What happens when, as Mick Whelan from ASLEF asked, 100% of passengers try to get on 40% minimum service level trains? Ultimately, the Bill will do nothing to help resolve disputes or support good industrial relations; in fact, it will do absolutely the opposite.

Last week, the Secretary of State told me that ILO common practice authorises minimum service levels, but he neglected to mention that the ILO imposes restraints on the circumstances in which such powers can be used, the antithesis of the blank cheque that the Bill will give him and other Ministers. This Government’s attempts to draw comparisons with minimum service levels in Europe wholly ignore the broader context of industrial relations across the continent, where there are far higher levels of collective bargaining agreements. In fact, I would say that these proposals are more akin to the practice in countries such as Singapore and Turkey, where strikes can be undermined at the whim of the Government. It is totally disingenuous to suggest otherwise.

The Bill will give Ministers extraordinary powers. Firefighters, nurses, teachers and the same key workers the Government have praised will find themselves liable to be prohibited from striking. It is unnecessary. We should not be back to the days of the Tolpuddle martyrs.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

It is half an hour before the wind-ups start and there are more than 10 Members wishing to speak, so do the maths. Please come within the three minutes in order to get everybody in.

Nationality and Borders Bill

Debate between Nigel Evans and Sam Tarry

Report stage
Tuesday 7th December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Sam Tarry]

Thousands of constituents in Ilford South are certainly not terrorists. What happens if they decide to go on a protest about their rights, or against something that the Government are doing to them? Would they then be deemed a terrorist, and at what point? Remember that some of the laws that the Government are looking to bring forward over the next couple of weeks extend the circumstances in which people can be accused of being terrorists. If someone is a climate activist, are they now a terrorist? What about someone who is campaigning because their family are Bangladeshis who are drowning in Bangladesh due to this Government’s inaction on climate change? Can it then be said, “You’re a terrorist—you’re going to have your citizenship removed”? The problem is that people in Ilford South do not trust this Government to take care of minority communities because their track record is so dreadful.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. We cannot have interventions that last longer than the speech that is being given.

Covid-19: BAME Communities

Debate between Nigel Evans and Sam Tarry

Thursday 18th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Sam Tarry (Ilford South) (Lab)]

I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) who, as we all know, has campaigned so passionately on many of these issues for a very long time.

This is a deeply troubling moment for many minority communities, not least in my constituency of Ilford South, where minority communities—black communities, Asian communities, people representing nearly every corner of the globe—represent over 53% of the population, and growing every year. Ilford South has a tapestry of communities that coexist, that work together. Through the recent covid crisis, I have had heartening moments with local people, such as when the local gurdwara has provided over 4,000 meals a week to help the vulnerable and those in need. People have been working together—churches alongside mosques alongside synagogues. And yet it is our local community that has suffered so badly. On my Facebook page, I see people from the Bangladeshi community putting up posts asking us to make prayers for their friends and family members who have lost loved ones. The impact has been difficult and dark for many people in my community.

So many people have taken the time to reach out to me, to write in to me—I have had hundreds of emails and letters on this issue. Not just about the death of Belly Mujinga, who was a member of my former union, the TSSA, and rightly took the time, a few weeks ago, to challenge Govia Thameslink directly over the lack of protective equipment and the way that she was forced to go and work on the platform, rather than safely in the ticket office where she normally worked. So many people have lost loved ones during this pandemic and in some cases, I am afraid to say, it appears to be avoidable. Many more have been terrified to leave their home for fear of contracting this deadly disease.

Actually, in many BAME communities, the proportion of people who work in frontline services, whether it be bus drivers or people working in the NHS, is incredibly high and people are fearful, and they are angry that they and their communities have not been prioritised by the Government in the way that they should have been. These are rational fears. In my Bangladeshi community —my own friends—the risk of death has been double that of people of white British ethnicity. In other communities—Indian, Pakistani, other Asian, Caribbean, black communities—the risks have been 10% to 50% higher than for white British people, and yet many of those people were the first to be put on furlough, the first to lose their jobs, and have had the greatest burden in terms of how many they have seen die from their own community.

There are many factors behind these deaths. One would appear to be a lack of support, in that they often feel too scared to speak out. But I have been working on it, and this week we are having another Zoom meeting—something that has seemed ubiquitous recently—and I am expecting hundreds of people to join up from local black communities, to talk about these issues. There will be a moment of self-reflection for those of us who have real privilege, about what we can do to be genuine allies to communities facing oppression and always finding themselves at the bottom of the pile. I look forward to that, and I thank the hon. Members who will be joining me for that call later this week.

I would like to talk a little bit about one of the cases that I have had about frontline health care staff. You know, we were quite proactive in Redbridge. When we realised that many of our care homes did not have the PPE that they needed, we sought out what in old-fashioned parlance might be described as a local rag trade company —a manufacturer of garments—and begged them to turn their machinery to producing the garments needed for our care homes, so that people working there could have the protection that they needed. Yet we found too often, time and again, that frontline workers were sent into the firing line, despite being ill-equipped and despite being in vulnerable categories. That is still so unacceptable.

I think that many of us will look back on this period and ask what more we could have done, and our Government could have done, to protect these communities, which have borne such a heavy toll.

Over the past few months, one thing that I have found particularly difficult has been the increase in not just fear but racism—that some communities have almost been targeted, perhaps because of online rumours that their community is more likely to be bringing in this awful disease. That is totally unacceptable. From the Bangladeshi community to the Chinese community, so many communities have faced racism. It has been really tough for my own family. My son happens to be mixed-race Chinese, and some of the comments that his mother has had have been pretty appalling.

We as a nation need to put those who too often find themselves at the very bottom to the very top of our priorities. Comments from the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies and decisions by people such as Dominic Cummings have meant that the trust that even some of my constituents had in the Government has been utterly eroded. We can never have a situation—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. I am sorry, but we have to move on. I call Christine Jardine.