Gaza

Baroness Morris of Bolton Excerpts

Monday 14th July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Morris of Bolton (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interests as president of Medical Aid for Palestinians and the Prime Minister’s trade envoy for the Palestinian territories. Even before the current hostilities began, health services in Gaza were in steady decline, with drugs running dangerously low and 300 pieces of essential equipment not functioning. That was before the horrendous lifetime disabilities that have been suffered by hundreds of Palestinians, many of them children. Will the Government do all they can to ensure the necessary medical supplies reach Gaza? MAP is one of only three NGOs to have contributed to dealing with the drug shortage so far, so there is quite a worrying lack of take-up. Will the Government put all the pressure that they possibly can on the relevant authorities to ensure that the patients who need skilled reconstructive surgery outside Gaza are able to leave Gaza? At the moment, only a trickle of patients are getting out.

[Baroness Warsi]

I thank my noble friend for that update. She comes to these matters with great expertise and understanding of the region. On a number of occasions, including before the current situation arose, I have said that it is only right that we work together to ease the restrictions on Gaza. We continue to urge Israel to ease the restrictions, including the movement of goods and persons from and to the Gaza Strip. However, my noble friend will be aware that the United Kingdom is one of the largest donors to the region and we will ensure we continue that support.

Syria and the Middle East

Baroness Morris of Bolton Excerpts

Monday 1st July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Morris of Bolton]

My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Afshar, and I, too, thank my noble friend Lady Warsi for giving us this opportunity to debate this important and timely issue. There have been some exceptional and powerful speeches, which will merit rereading, I suspect, for some time to come.

It is now two and a half years since the tragic death of a street vendor in Tunisia, Mohamed Bouazizi, which triggered the astonishing train of events across the Arab world. These past 31 months have witnessed uprisings, the overthrow of regimes, the death of dictators and the election of new Governments; quickly followed by disillusion with those Governments as they failed to meet the expectations of their citizens. These months have also witnessed the deaths of tens of thousands of men, women and children in Syria. What started in Syria as a political uprising in March 2011, as many noble Lords have said, is now increasingly religious. As the conflict enters its third year, Syria’s tragedy is that sectarian divisions and religious hatred are fuelling the conflict, pitting Syrian against Syrian.

We can be certain when we say that Bashar al-Assad is a brutal dictator but we must also acknowledge, and condemn, the barbarous acts of cruelty perpetrated by some of the rebel groups; the kidnap of Christians, the wanton killing of Shia and the gruesome and public murder last month of 15 year-old Mohammad Qataa in Aleppo by Islamic jihadists. These factors should inform our judgment when we consider arming the rebels, some of whom are only one or two steps away from al-Qaeda. Syria, like whole swathes of the Middle East, is awash with weapons, as my noble friends Lord Ashdown and Lord Alderdice have explained. If we add to these weapons, we can have no guarantee that they would not be exchanged, stolen or fall into the hands of extremists. I fear the belief that the weapons would somehow stay in the hands of secular, pro-western forces, or that they can be tracked, simply would not hold true in the fog of war, with the utter unpredictability and fast changing dynamism of events on the ground.

Having said all that, I completely understand and am in no way critical of those who call for the arming of the rebels, and my noble friend Lord Risby is persuasive in his argument. The natural reaction of anyone observing such appalling bloodshed, with the death toll approaching 100,000, is to want to do something. However, I question that arming the rebels is the something that we should do.

We cannot just sit on our hands and do nothing. Our actions should be guided by what we can do—energetically, as my noble friend Lord Alderdice said—and not what we would like to be able to do. We can and must continue to intervene with humanitarian assistance. UNICEF reports that 1.6 million refugees have now fled Syria to neighbouring countries; as we have already heard, half of these terrified, displaced refugees are children.

I need to declare a number of interests: I am a former trustee of UNICEF UK; I chair the Conservative Middle East Council; I am president of Medical Aid for Palestinians; and I am the Prime Minister’s trade envoy to Jordan and the Palestinian Territories.

Last year, on a visit to the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, I met and spent some time with families who had fled Syria. They were Turkmen, but had ended up in the Palestinian camp of Ain el-Hilweh. Their new homes comprised a tin roof and walls made from the cardboard packaging that protects washing machines and fridges. These walls might have afforded some protection in September 2012 but as I witnessed one of the coldest winters in the Levant on my television screen, I often wondered how those kind, hospitable but bewildered families were surviving.

Across the border, the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, with its customary generosity, has once again opened its heart and country to the dispossessed victims of man’s struggle against man. In a recent interview with the al-Sharq al-Awsat newspaper, His Majesty King Abdullah II said:

“How can we close the border in the face of a woman carrying an infant and fleeing under shelling?”.

But he went on to say that he fears Jordan finding herself in a difficult situation and not being able to provide relief for her Syrian bothers and sisters seeking a safe haven.

The international community must not for one minute underestimate the situation the neighbours of Syria find themselves in. I am proud that Britain has already spent £348 million on providing critical assistance to Syria’s refugees, making this the UK’s largest ever response to a humanitarian disaster. But there is much more to do. As the intensity of the crisis increases, 53% of all the Syrian refugees in Jordan have entered since the beginning of 2013. As of 15 June, there were 545,694 Syrian refugees in Jordan. That is 9% of the total population of Jordan. Translated into UK terms, it is as if a refugee population equivalent to the number of people living in Scotland had arrived in our country and become our responsibility. That would be massively destabilising to us—just imagine, as the noble Lord, Lord Judd, invited us to do, the impact on the Jordanian economy and public services, not to mention the scarce resource of water. We must do all that we can to support Jordan and all the other countries that have so generously and selflessly opened their borders to the dispossessed, and we must strive with all our diplomatic strength for sanity to prevail.

Before I finish, I wish to turn to another conflicted area where sanity also needs to prevail: Palestine. While the world, rightly, concentrates on the savagery of events in Syria, we must never forget, nor diminish our efforts to find a solution to the occupation and the oppression of the Palestinian people. The time is rapidly running out for a viable two-state solution, and with it Palestinian hope for the normality of life that we all take for granted and which is a vital component of the stability of Israel. There is much good work going on to build up civil society and encourage trade but all efforts now should be on a political solution and I am very pleased that Secretary of State John Kerry is seized of this. I hope that the British Government are employing some of the “quiet diplomacy” of which the noble Baroness, Lady Afshar, spoke.

Palestine and Syria both need the determined will of the international community. As in all conflicts, there cannot—and will not—be any outright victor, only a just solution that isolates the most extreme and works to ensure that everyone feels they have a stake in the future.

Middle East: Gaza and Syria

Baroness Morris of Bolton Excerpts

Tuesday 20th November 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Warsi]

The situation is slightly different in relation to the two areas. In Syria, in terms of the immediate violence, we have been dealing with a crisis over a lengthy period. However, as I said in my Statement, we have through the DfID programme been funding a number of individuals including journalists and human rights activists who are logging and recording information. If you send out a clear message that there will not be a culture of impunity in these matters, that starts to build the reconciliation process.

On Israel, Gaza and the West Bank, there are a number of programmes of which I am sure the right reverend Prelate will be aware. Some are based on religious grounds, where religious leaders have come together to build peace, and some are being done through educational projects and through the voluntary and charity sector. I had the privilege of seeing a sports project when I visited. I agree that peace cannot just be imposed from the top down; it has also to be built from the bottom up. However, in a situation such as this, I fundamentally believe that real progress will be made when we start showing real political will.

[Baroness Morris of Bolton]

My Lords—

[Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean]

My Lords—

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I think that it is now this side’s turn and then perhaps those on the opposite side who are trying to come in might stand up in a queue, so to speak.

[Baroness Morris of Bolton]

My Lords, perhaps I may pick up on a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Triesman, and, in doing so, declare an interest as president of Medical Aid for Palestinians. What is being done to address the critical shortages faced by hospitals in Gaza, where 40% of essential medicines and 60% of medical disposals were already at zero stock before the escalation, because of the blockade?

Christians in the Middle East

Baroness Morris of Bolton Excerpts

Friday 9th December 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Morris of Bolton]

My Lords, with the democratic awakening of the Arab world and the attendant rise of Islamist groups, it is important not to forget the Christian minority at the heart of the Middle East. I, too, am most grateful to the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury for bringing this important debate to your Lordships’ House and for his remarkable speech in opening it.

The Arab spring defies generalisation, and each country is undergoing change in its own way. However, a common theme is the desire for dignity, which unites not just the Arab world but everyone across the world. The other common theme is the desire for economic prosperity. The changes that we are witnessing will be judged by how well they meet these expectations. They will also be judged by how well these countries treat their minorities.

As we have heard, the Christian community is disappearing from the Middle East at an alarming rate. War, oppression, occupation, persecution and low birth rates all have some part to play. Yet the strengths of the Christian community, which has so enriched the Middle East over the centuries through its contribution to science, art, culture, the economy and politics, are probably needed now more than ever. How we react to this and the steps that we take to redress it are of importance not just to a religion with its birth and roots in the region but, as the most reverend Primate said, to the stability of the region as a whole. We must encourage the moderate, mainstream majority of Muslims, whose voices we will hear today in this debate, to denounce extremism in all its forms. That is not always easy, because moderate Muslims suffer too from the hands of extreme Islamists.

The world needs to understand the true face of Islam. In an article published earlier this year in the Independent online, in response to the killings of Christians in Iraq and Egypt, Dr Mohammed Abdel-Haq, a Muslim and the chairman of the advisory board of the Conservative Middle East Council—an organisation which I chair—wrote of the sensitivity of the Second Caliph Umar displayed to Christians when he entered Jerusalem. His declaration, known as the treaty of Umar, states that Christians will enjoy security for themselves, their money, their churches, their lowly, their innocent and the remainder of their people. Their churches are not to be taken or destroyed, and they are not to be degraded or belittled, nor are their crosses or their money, and they are not be forced to change their regions, nor are any of them to be harmed. That was in 637.

More recently—last night, in fact—I returned from Jordan, having been at a meeting of the international advisory board of the Amman Arab university. I love Jordan in December. Everywhere you go, you find Christmas trees and decorations, and Jordanian Muslims joining with their Christian neighbours to celebrate Christmas. As the noble Lord, Lord Turnberg, quite rightly said, this is a tribute to the tolerant rule of His Majesty King Abdullah and to his father King Hussein before him. These two examples—Omar and Jordan, in 637 and today—encapsulate the Muslim faith that I have always had the pleasure of encountering. This is the face of Islam that we should all encourage, because extremists of all faiths are not just a threat to other faiths but a potent threat to their own.

The Christian faith has also to be careful how it frames the tone and content of this debate. Today was an excellent start. We should embrace the values that bind the three great monotheistic religions, and others, rather than constantly looking at our differences. We should also recognise that some of the things we find uncomfortable today were acceptable in our church not long ago. I received—as I am sure all noble Lords did—research from Christian Middle East Watch. I am not sure who they are. I looked at their website, but apart from what they do they seem very shy of revealing their identity. However, in their research they submit certain texts used in Palestinian schools. I do not support the texts but I could not help remembering my husband telling me that when he was at one of the great Catholic schools, not that long ago, his knowledge of history stopped at the Reformation. We have all been guilty over time of spinning the story to suit our narrative.

In my remaining minutes I will return to Palestine. I declare an interest as the newly appointed president of Medical Aid for Palestinians. Recent research by the Applied Research Institute in Jerusalem estimates that the occupation costs the Palestinian economy 85 per cent of GDP—that is, £4.4 billion a year. This impacts on the whole community, but it has a disproportionate effect on Christians. They tend to have better contacts abroad and better resources to emigrate. Therefore, instead of putting up with confiscation of land and water, curfews, roadblocks and checkpoints, the demolition of houses and restrictions on new building, and the encroachment of settlements, they take their skills and good education and move abroad.

Today, almost three-quarters of all Bethlehem Christians live abroad. As the noble Lord, Lord Storey, said, more Jerusalem Christians live in Sydney, Australia, than in Jerusalem. This is bad news not just for Palestinian Christians but for all Palestinians and all Israelis, because these are well educated, good business men and women. Above all, they are moderate and they are needed in Palestine because they are an integral part of Arab culture. Of the 2 per cent of Christians who still live in Palestine, many hold seats in the legislative council. I join the noble Lord, Lord Wright, in praising the many Israelis who work tirelessly for the human rights of Palestinians.

I had the privilege last month of attending a round-table discussion at Lambeth Palace on the situation of Christians in the Middle East. It was generously hosted by the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury. It was generally agreed that we need a change of hearts and minds and that the Christian people have a heart for their country and a desire to see their countries prosper. Christians are an essential component of a safe and stable Middle East. As Karen Armstrong concludes in her excellent book, Muhammad: Prophet for Our Time, if we are to avoid catastrophe, the Muslim and western worlds must learn not merely to tolerate but to appreciate one another.

Middle East and North Africa

Baroness Morris of Bolton Excerpts

Friday 11th February 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Morris of Bolton]

My Lords, the current political unrest in the Middle East, particularly that seen in Tunisia and Egypt, is of momentous significance. Events are almost too fast to follow, with rumour and counter-rumour. However, one thing remains constant: the tide of events that began on 17 December, when in desperation Mohammed Bouazizi set himself on fire, cannot be ignored or wished away, so I am most grateful to the Government and to my noble friend the Minister for giving us the opportunity to hold this timely debate. I agree with my noble friend Lord Fowler: the opening speeches by my noble friend the Minister and by the noble Baroness, Lady Symons of Vernham Dean, were extremely powerful and set the tone of the debate. I declare my interest as chairman of the Conservative Middle East Council and as a member of the international advisory committee of the Amman Arab University.

I believe that we should not be fearful of the changes that now seem inevitable in many parts of the Middle East and North Africa. The popular movements in Tunisia and Egypt have been largely peaceful and, for the most part, are not anti-western: they represent people of all ages and backgrounds, striving for universal aspirations that we all share—freedom of expression and political pluralism. There has also been a marked lack of religious rhetoric. Yes, the Muslim Brotherhood has a presence but it is one faction among many and, as my noble friend Lord Alderdice said, it is not as sinister as it is portrayed and will become more moderate only by participating in a multiparty political arena.

Democracy now seems inevitable and, as parliamentarians, we should be heartened by this. The extraordinary power of mass communications—e-mail, Facebook and mobiles—means that societies are more open than ever before and that stifling popular expression is no longer a regime’s privilege. Indeed, the scenes in Egypt give rise to a sense of inevitability in the spectator: it is a reminder of the overwhelming power of popular expression. We should applaud the bravery and tenacity of the peaceful protesters in Cairo’s Tahrir Square. We should support their legitimate aspirations but we must not, as many noble Lords have said, impose our own agenda. Change must come from within. The future of Egypt will be full of challenges and a transition to multiparty democracy with free and fair elections will not be risk-free. Yet a greater risk for Egypt, the Middle East and ourselves would lie in denying Egyptians the right to democracy.

The most basic lesson, perhaps, from the scenes in Cairo and Tunis is that if political opposition is not allowed within a political system, it is eventually seen on the streets. To help me grasp the more nuanced points of developing opposition I turned to my friends at the Centre for Opposition Studies, which exists to promote greater study of political opposition in the UK and elsewhere. Its honorary presidents are my noble friend Lord Howard of Lympne, the noble Lord, Lord Kinnock, and the right honourable Charles Kennedy. Its director, Nigel Fletcher, helps me regularly with research and its chairman, one of my closest friends, Dr Mohammed Abdel-Haq, is British-Jordanian of Palestinian extract, so he understands the region very well. I am most grateful to them for their help.

Benjamin Disraeli’s famous dictum,

“No government can be long secure without a formidable opposition”,

is vindicated by current events. Suppressing criticism may give a short-term impression of security, but in the longer term it stores up huge pressure for change, which when it comes can be violent and dangerous. In this sense, democratic opposition provides a vital pressure valve through which political dissent can be expressed. A government who regularly have to meet this challenge—and this Government certainly know it—both in their legislature and at elections cannot afford to ignore opposing views, even where they disagree, and will therefore be at less risk of becoming out of touch with their people.

The close and sustained scrutiny that an opposition provides also helps clarify policy and makes for better governance at all levels. Suppressing dissent and prohibiting an opposition from operating freely has consequences beyond those for the incumbent regime. It also affects the prospects for the stability of an entire country. Where there is no substantial opposition party in Parliament, or none politically active in the democratic process outside it, the voters are denied a credible choice. It also means there is no alternative government available when, as seems very likely in Egypt, political unrest displaces the incumbent regime. This has proved a significant issue in recent developments, with commentators and western Governments alike asking, “Who comes next?” The lack of a clear answer is evidence of the importance of cohesive opposition to regional stability.

Political reform in any country must place a high priority on developing opposition as a political institution. The concept of “Loyal Opposition” is fundamental to a properly functioning democracy: it legitimises dissent at the very heart of the political system but within a framework of shared acceptance of the constitutional settlement. This loyalty is essential to maintaining peace and stability. Many countries in the Middle East are already making significant steps towards democracy and political reform. Jordan, for example, has a Ministry of Political Development which is engaging seriously with many of these issues. It was notable that His Majesty King Abdullah moved quickly to respond to the legitimate concerns of the Jordanian people. It was also notable that, among the unrest in Jordan, the opposition parties pledged their support for the monarchy. His Majesty King Abdullah has engaged in a sweeping programme of political and economic reforms and we should wish him and Prime Minister Marouf al-Bakhit well and be ready to help them where we can. I believe that aid from DfID that went to Jordan, which really holds the line in a very difficult area, was cut a few years ago. I wonder whether we might have any plans to restore that, particularly after my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary’s visit to Jordan.

We are most fortunate in this country to have remarkable ambassadors throughout the region. Many former ambassadors now serve in your Lordships’ House. I wonder whether my noble friend can say what practical steps we are taking through our embassies and the British Council to help our good friends in the region. In helping our friends, we must do all we can to persuade Israel and Palestine back to the negotiating table. The lessons of Tunisia and Egypt hold great relevance for Israel. A two-state negotiated solution is now more urgent than ever. Palestinians must—as Egyptians will—enjoy the right to a democratic state to live their lives with dignity and respect, free of occupation and conflict. I applaud the words of my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary, because a viable two-state solution is a vital ingredient of a stable region.

As I said at the beginning of my speech, we should not seek to impose our system and, as my noble friend the Minister so rightly said, we should deal with each country in its own unique way. Ultimately, however, democracy must be the prize to which the world aspires. We, as British parliamentarians, are guardians of a long history of multiparty democracy and groups in Westminster, such as the Westminster Foundation for Democracy and the Centre for Opposition Studies, help to project our values to a global audience. We should support aspirations for political plurality in the Arab world as a value we share and hold dear.

Human Rights

Baroness Morris of Bolton Excerpts

Thursday 2nd December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Morris of Bolton]

My Lords, this is an important moment in the development of what the Foreign Secretary, my right honourable friend William Hague, has termed “foreign policy with a conscience”. I pay tribute to noble Lords, Members of another place, the Diplomatic Service, NGOs and all women and men who are working tirelessly and with deep commitment to advance human rights in remote corners of the earth, and who keep human rights abuses on the agenda of Her Majesty’s Government. In this respect, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, on her maiden speech and the noble Lord, Lord Alton, on his dedication and passion in standing up for the oppressed and dispossessed. I, too, am full of admiration for the noble Lord, and I thank him for giving us the opportunity to debate these vital issues today. Lastly, I pay tribute to my party’s human rights commission on its excellent work.

For the purpose of this debate, I declare my interests as a member of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, chairman of the Conservative Middle East Council, vice-chairman of the Britain-Palestine All-Party Parliamentary Group and a trustee of UNICEF UK. I will focus my remarks on two areas in which I have a particular interest and where the plight of the people should make us all stop and think. They are the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Gaza. These two places face very different conditions, but each tells a tale of the crushing of human spirit and the waste of human potential. Each requires immediate, collective and effective measures by the humanitarian community and major aid donors.

The situation of women in the DRC, which was recently described as the rape capital of the world, is dire. From the start of the war, Congolese women and young girls have been systematically targeted by all parties to the conflict. It is so bad that Vava Tampa, the founding director of Save the Congo, has said that every woman is a rape victim in waiting. As the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Wakefield stated so powerfully, the use of rape to punish, displace or destroy women and communities in times of conflict is well documented. However, what makes the raping of women and girls, and sometimes of men and baby boys, in the Congo most tragic is its blood-chilling scale, its effect on the social fabric of Congolese society, and the disastrous consequences for the Congo and the Great Lakes region for many years to come. I hope my noble friend the Minister can tell us what we are doing to ensure that appropriate mechanisms are put in place to end the growing culture of impunity that lies behind the cycle of atrocities in the Congo.

John Ging, a most inspirational man and director of operations in Gaza for the UN Relief and Works Agency, said recently:

“We have run out of words to describe how bad it is here”.

A month ago, I returned from a trip to Gaza. I was enormously moved by the plight of the people, and three things I saw have made a lasting impression. The first was a visit to the al-Shifa hospital, where vital medical equipment lies idle because of a lack of spare parts, and where we met patients denied permission to leave Gaza for life-saving treatment, often without any explanation given as to why that permission had been denied. I implore the Government to use all the diplomacy at their disposal to ensure that the medical needs of the people of Gaza are met.

The second visit to make a lasting impression was to an UNRWA food distribution centre where proud, well-educated men and women were queuing for their quarterly rations of food. Eighty per cent of the population of Gaza receives food aid, yet there has been no flood, no failure of crops and no earthquake, just a shutdown of the system that denies the people the chance to work because there are no jobs, and there are no jobs because they cannot import materials, they cannot manufacture goods and they cannot export. Nor can they travel to Israel any more to the jobs they used to enjoy. I have to tell your Lordships that I felt deep shame, and I pay tribute to the decency, good humour and enormous resilience of the Palestinian people, who wish to be good neighbours to Israel and who have so much to offer to the world.

Finally, I visited a human rights class in an UNRWA school in the Beach refugee camp. There, despite their circumstances, the 15 year-old girls were beautifully dressed. They were attentive, clever and articulate, and their grasp of human rights and the attendant responsibilities to people of all backgrounds and all religions or none would put most grown-ups in the western world to shame, and would have gladdened the heart of the noble Lord, Lord Sacks. At the end of the lesson I was asked by one of the girls whether I thought they had a future to look forward to. I hope I was right when I said yes.

Foreign Policy

Baroness Morris of Bolton Excerpts

Thursday 1st July 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Morris of Bolton]

My Lords, it is an easy task to congratulate my noble friend on his excellent maiden speech. He comes to your Lordships’ House after many years of service in another place. In his role as deputy chairman of the party with responsibility for candidates, he shared with me a passion to broaden the diversity of Conservative MPs. Anyone looking at the Conservative Benches today will see a much changed political party. However, it is as a former shadow Foreign Secretary that today my noble friend displayed an acute grasp of the world in which we live. His speech was a powerful and humorous contribution to the debate and we welcome him to this House.

As the world picks itself up from the aftermath of the financial crisis and continues to grapple with the threat of global terrorism, war, hunger, drought and natural disasters, it is all too easy to look gloomily upon the future. However, as my noble and learned friend Lord Howe of Aberavon illustrated, there are countless opportunities for us to seize, and I add my congratulations to him on securing such an important and timely debate.

One of the strengths of our country and its great institutions is that, following a change in government, there remains a degree of continuity and stability in dealing with our international partners. We are assisted greatly in that continuity by the professionalism and expertise of our diplomatic service and dedicated officials in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and elsewhere, of which the noble Lord, Lord Butler of Brockwell, spoke with passion.

However, the new Government represent a change in emphasis and some exciting and important changes in approach. My right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary wishes to carve out a distinctive new global identity. He believes that successful economic policy is the foundation of successful foreign policy, and he wants to focus on emerging nations and gives particular mention to the Gulf states. As someone said to me the other day, the Middle East is right in the middle of world business. We do more trade with the region than we do with China, and we have historic and deep-rooted friendships. I declare my interest and friendship as chairman of the Conservative Middle East Council.

One area where Great Britain has a long-established but growing relationship with the Gulf and the wider Middle East region is education. Just as education nurtures the talent of the next generation here at home, it is also a powerful tool in supporting development abroad. Education links between the West and the developing world—in particular, the Middle East—have the potential to yield benefits far beyond the confines of academic achievement in those countries. In this respect, we are extremely fortunate that our higher education system is world-class and international in outlook. It is an asset on which we should be able to capitalise, and indeed many of our universities are developing links with new parts of the world—arrangements that benefit students at home and abroad.

I have just become the first chancellor of the University of Bolton. From its days as an institute of higher education, Bolton has forged alliances across the world and three years ago established a campus in the Emirates in Ras al Khaimah. In fact, we are now on our third campus because we keep outgrowing our premises. We are currently educating up to masters level hundreds of students, male and female, from 35 different nations in construction, civil engineering, IT and business.

I am also a member of the International Advisory Committee of the Amman Arab University. The founders of the university, who number leading academics and former government Ministers, want their students, many of whom are older and working and unable to study abroad, to have a flavour of the western education which they themselves received when they did their masters and doctorates in the UK or America and which was instrumental in shaping and broadening their outlook. Properly implemented, these links can generate greater understanding between different cultures and traditions, and make conflict and tension less likely. Education is a ladder of opportunity, and a bridge between nations and peoples. We need those bridges, because engagement is the only effective way of promoting better international relationships.

Finally, I could not possibly speak in this debate without mention of Palestine. I declare interests as a trustee of UNICEF UK and of the Disability Partnership, both of which run programmes in Palestine; as the vice-chairman of the Britain-Palestine All-Party Parliamentary Group; and as the first chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for the Arab League. The remarkable and enchanting Middle East region will never reach its full potential while the question of Palestine is unresolved. To this end, the Arab world must continue to push its peace initiative to normalise relations between Israel and her neighbours, and I hope that we support them in this endeavour. Israel has a right to exist but so does Palestine, and there will be peace and security only when Palestinian children can live without blockades and settlements and with real hope of a prosperous future.