Palestine Statehood (Recognition) Bill [HL]

Lord Moraes Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 14th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Elliott of Whitburn Bay (Lab)]

My Lords, I strongly support the Private Member’s Bill from the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, on the recognition of the Palestinian state. I draw the House’s attention to my registered interest as a director of the Council for Arab-British Understanding.

For years Palestinians have been looking aghast at British policy and its hesitancy to recognise an independent state of Palestine. I empathise with that view. “If not now, when?”, they ask. How long do Palestinians have to wait? It is sad that we are still having this debate, as recognition should have happened years ago.

Back in 2014, I spoke in the debate in the other place and voted for the recognition of Palestine when it was passed by that House overwhelmingly. I want to challenge some of the arguments made against recognition. We do not have to recognise the state of Palestine with borders. There are plenty of examples where we have recognised states with territorial disputes, and rightly so—not least Israel, a state that has not declared its borders and in fact keeps expanding, but it is absolutely right that we recognise it.

We do not need to recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, and we will not have to recognise Jerusalem as Palestine’s capital. All of this should be decided in negotiations towards peace. But recognising a state of Palestine, as we recognised the State of Israel, should not be up for negotiation. It is in the gift of the British Government, and it is for the British Government to decide. The British Government have, for decades, since 1980, supported a two-state solution. The Government need to move beyond the slogan of a two-state solution, which I know they wholeheartedly believe in, to a situation of actively bringing this about; otherwise, they risk not being seen as credible on this issue.

Some point out that the Palestinian Authority is weak, and many think that it is corrupt, but recognition is not an endorsement of any Government, nor should it be—it is a recognition of a right of the people. For example, we recognise Iran but do not approve of its regime. The nature of the Palestinian Authority is immaterial to this issue.

Some argue that Israel will react by freezing out contacts with Britain, as it did with Sweden and Ireland, but I would ask whether we should be bullied by another state. We should stand up to bullies on a matter of principle. I believe that, currently, crimes against humanity are being committed in Gaza, where Israel has reimposed a complete blockade on a captive civilian population of some 2.3 million Palestinians. That is a form of collective punishment, and it needs to be called out by our Government.

Britain can and should recognise the state of Palestine and push for European allies to do likewise. Perhaps the French-Saudi Middle East peace conference in June is an opportunity to do this. We can do more; we can get behind the Arab plan as agreed in Cairo. The Arab reconstruction plan included a restatement of the Arab peace plan. It has the backing of all 22 Arab states, plus the support of the organisation of the Islamic conference of nations. That is 56 states in total. In my view, it is the bones of a plan that can bring peace to the Palestinian and Israeli people, which is, I believe, what we all want. Will the Government welcome it?

The Arab plan is for a two-state solution, to which the UK subscribes. The Israeli plan is for a one-state solution in which there is no Palestinian right of self-determination, no Palestinian state and no peace. The British Government need to recognise the state of Palestine, support the Arab plan in Cairo and take a leadership role in moving this situation forward.

[Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Moraes) (Lab)]

I respectfully advise noble Lords that the speaking time for this debate is three minutes.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Gold, suggested rather a long timeline for the date when we might recognise a Palestinian state. As other speakers have observed, 146 out of the 193 UN members now recognise Palestine. The number has been growing relentlessly—I would say inexorably. Until recently, the area of the world where there were relatively few supporters was Europe, but now that is changing. Last year, Norway, Ireland, Spain and Slovenia were added to the signatories, which already included Sweden and Poland. The 40-odd states, including Britain, that have not yet signed look increasingly internationally isolated.

The choice for our Government seems clear: do we remain in that diminishing group of states holding out against recognition and eventually and reluctantly take the plunge, or do we take the lead, recognise Palestinian rights and encourage others to do the same? Recognising Palestine is an essential prerequisite for the two-state solution, which is the holy grail repeatedly given to us by whoever wishes to talk about the Israeli-Palestine situation.

Back in April 2017, the International Relations Committee of this House published a report entitled The Middle East: Time for New Realism. On Israel-Palestine, the committee had this to say:

“On its current trajectory, the Israeli-Palestinian dispute is on the verge of moving into a phase where the two-state solution becomes an impossibility and is considered no longer viable by either side. The consequences would be grave for the region”.


If the Israelis and the Palestinians were to conclude that a two-state solution is neither possible nor viable, then please can someone tell me, because no one yet has in this debate, what on earth the solution to this dreadful, blood-soaked, interminable 80 year old conflict is? Does it mean a continuation indefinitely of the pattern that has existed since the establishment of the State of Israel, which is one of recurrent, savage wars, interspersed with fearful, menacing periods of relative peace, punctuated by sporadic violence?

Rejecting the two-state solution means, in practice, the de facto sovereignty of the whole of Israel-Palestine by the Israelis, with the permanent subjugation of millions of Palestinians. The truth is that, however difficult and complicated the establishment of a two-state solution may be, there is, to coin a phrase, no alternative. This is why the Bill before us is so important, because, of course, a two-state solution requires recognition of both the states.

It is no use repeating the mantra that we support the two-state solution but now is not the right time. Now is the right time. Indeed, with the growth of settlements, now is very close to being the last possible time, so surely the UK should join the 146 UN members that have recognised Palestine. Such a move would give dignity and status to what Labour describes in its manifesto as

“the inalienable right of the Palestinian people”.

It is the right thing to do, both morally and politically, and it is in the interests of all the states in the region, including Israel.

I urge the Government not to prevaricate, and not to say that we believe in Palestinian statehood but not just yet. The time has come to do it, and quickly.

[Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Moraes) (Lab)]

My Lords, I understand the sensitivities in this debate, but I ask remaining speakers to stick within the advisory speaking time of three minutes.

Europe: Youth Mobility

Lord Moraes Excerpts

Thursday 30th January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Moraes (Lab) (Maiden Speech)]

My Lords, I am honoured to make my maiden speech today in this debate. It is somewhat daunting. The doorkeeper steadied me just now and said, “Every one of the noble Lords in the Chamber today has been in the same place”. I am not sure if that helped. I did notice also that there are noble Lords and noble Baronesses who have had connections with the European Union and who have been MEPs.

I want to start my remarks in this maiden speech with some comments on the approach of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans to these mobility schemes. Many noble Lords and Baronesses in this Chamber will have had experience of those reciprocal mobility schemes in their work. In my experience over 20 years, I helped many young constituents with these reciprocal schemes and how to navigate them. Over the years I saw UK students, some from disadvantaged backgrounds who would not otherwise have afforded to access those schemes to study, benefit from Erasmus and other mobility opportunities. Those schemes were not perfect. For example, there should have been more UK take-up between 1987 and when we left in 2020—that is clear. But, very objectively, I saw a lasting benefit for those students in the UK, and I also saw measurable economic benefit and benefit to our academic institutions in the UK.

On this vexed point that the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans raised about free movement, I would love to hear other opinions on it in this debate, but my understanding was always that the legal base of these reciprocal mobility schemes was never anything to do with free movement because they did not involve settlement and that was the key legal element that would make such schemes “free movement”. These schemes are not free movement; they are reciprocal schemes that generate advantages in all aspects of our lives. I will limit my comments on the debate to that and will now proceed with my maiden speech.

I thank your Lordships for the kindness and support I have received since entering the House. I thank my noble friends Lord Kennedy of Southwark and Lady Smith of Basildon for introducing me. I was only introduced on 16 January, but already I have received so much help and kindness from the remarkable staff in every part of this House.

I feel the honour of being in this House very keenly, not least because of my own background. I was a first-generation immigrant to this country. I was born in Aden, but my family had to leave during the Aden Emergency. My family were then split—my mother took us back to her country of origin, India, while my father gained entry to the UK as an overseas student, where he trained as a teacher and became a key worker in Scotland. We were eventually reunited. My parents were part of that generation which, some noble Lords and Baronesses will understand, was a generation of Commonwealth immigrants of the 1960s and 1970s who came to this country to give their children opportunity—and that certainly happened to me.

I then grew up in Scotland, first in Dundee and then Stirling, and this of course explains my accent, which has been somewhat commented on. As a new member—I am sure other new noble Lords and Baronesses will have had this experience—I am open to all sorts of advice. The first piece of advice I got on the first day that I came was from a noble Lord, who will remain unnamed, who said, “That’s a very nice soft Scottish accent”. Then he paused and added, “But nobody’s going to hear it if you don’t speak up”. So I immediately raised my volume and I have kept to that volume, hopefully, for noble Lords and Baronesses.

I came to London to further my law studies but could only do so because I had the opportunity to work for John Reid, then an MP, and later Paul Boateng, then an MP—now my noble friends Lord Reid of Cardowan and Lord Boateng. I thank them both for the start they gave me. I then stayed in the capital, working at the Trades Union Congress—the noble Lord, Lord Monks, allowed me to work at Congress House and I thank him for that—and, later, as director of JCWI, an independent legal protection NGO in the area of immigration, nationality and asylum law. In some ways, I was returning to the issues that had affected my family, but your Lordships may well recall that, during the period of the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s, the UK experienced the most significant refugee arrivals since the war—from the former Yugoslavia, the Kurds, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka. Working on these refugee issues individually, and on the policy, was a very formative experience. I did, of course, encounter many colleagues during that JCWI period and I am very honoured that they have come to listen to my maiden speech.

In 1999, I had the honour of being elected to the European Parliament for London. I shared this honour for a period with the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, who was also on my London list. I am really gratified that a number of colleagues who also served in the European Parliament are present in the Chamber. I chaired the Parliament’s justice and home affairs committee, and that legislative committee became enormous. It covered security, migration and the rule of law, but, because the Lisbon treaty gave it the competences and powers, it ended up reaching into data and privacy. As a result, I was able to chair the Facebook inquiry and work on data adequacy agreements, and I started work on the EU AI White Paper before we left the EU in 2020.

That brings me to a second reason why I am so happy and honoured to join your Lordships’ House. Over that whole period, I regularly gave evidence to committees of your Lordships’ House. This peaked in 2018—some noble Lords and Baronesses will recognise this—at a time when we were having heated discussions on how we were going to resolve issues post Brexit. How were we going to continue to share security databases such as SIS II or remain involved in Europol? Were we going to achieve data adequacy with the EU and were we going to adopt the European arrest warrant? Some of these issues are still not resolved and are still being considered by the House.

My point is that I gave evidence to Lords committees, whether it was the EU Home Affairs Sub-Committee or the European Union Scrutiny Committee, as it was, in front of noble Lords who actually understood the issues—I am not making any comparisons with the evidence I gave to the Home Affairs Select Committee in the other House, which is a fine committee—and in some cases had actually put the issues together. I will give one example: the noble Lord, Lord Kirkhope, negotiated the passenger name record security agreements in the EU, and then he was the noble Lord asking me questions about it—which was kind of defeating, but there we go. It does give a sense of how this House can often be incisive and in the moment but can also, in my view, take a longer view of some of the most sensitive issues Parliament has to deal with, in an age when everyone wants instant solutions but when it is sometimes important to think through the most sensitive issues if we possibly can.

In conclusion, it has been an honour to make my first speech in your Lordships’ House in this debate and on this subject, and I very much look forward to making contributions in the future.