Conflict Prevention

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Tuesday 21st June 2011 Westminster Hall

[Simon Hughes]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend about that point. I have a brother who is still working for the MOD and who has been in the Army in various parts of the world. However, it did not take him to remind me that it is more useful for the Army to stabilise a situation and to teach the skills of conflict avoidance and so on, than it is for it to engage in conflict. Sometimes conflict prevention is not perceived as being the dramatic work by the armed forces for which we pay our taxes, but it is both the most productive role of the armed forces and—frankly—the way that we can save not only the lives of people in faraway countries, such as Afghanistan, but in countries such as our own, including the lives of our service people who would otherwise pay a very high cost.

I also share my hon. Friend’s view that we not only need to have an ambition about the share of our national cake that we give to overseas development but that we need to have our armed forces fully committed to conflict prevention, as they want to be and as they increasingly have the skills to be.

I want to give one or two examples of how successful conflict prevention can be, if it is got right. They are examples of the work of the United Nations Development Programme which, since 2002, has assisted fragile countries to build resilience by strengthening what the UNDP calls “infrastructures for peace”. I commend the work of the UNDP’s Chetan Kumar, who has shown how extraordinarily efficient and effective very small financial contributions can be in transforming difficult situations. Let me give some examples of the UNDP’s success.

In Ghana in December 2008, there were rising tensions between different regions. Chieftaincy-related conflicts in parts of the country and the discovery of oil led to new tensions as the country approached national elections. When the elections were held, there was the narrowest margin of votes recorded in an African election—only 50,000 votes separated the winner and the loser. With tensions rising still further, the National Peace Council of Ghana, an autonomous and statutory national body that was established with assistance from the UNDP, helped to mediate a peaceful political transition. As part of Ghana’s peace infrastructure or peace architecture, regional and district peace councils are also being established.

Then there is the example of Togo in 2005, which shows that all this is not past history; it is very recent history. There were about 250 deaths in the 2005 national elections. However, in 2010 the establishment of a platform for political dialogue prior to the national elections and the ability of civic actors to conduct a sustained peace campaign led to a reduction in tensions and to peaceful elections, as well as to a stable post-electoral period. A code of conduct for political parties and a public peace campaign were developed and implemented with UNDP assistance. Further development included consolidation of a national peace architecture as a priority in 2011.

In Timor, between 2007 and 2009 the peace process that had followed the establishment of East Timor as an independent state nearly collapsed, after a massive return of refugees and internally displaced persons. With UN assistance, a network of community mediators was established; the mediators were trained and deployed; and other conflict resolution efforts enabled the return and resettlement of 13,000 families by 2010. The Government there are now working with the UNDP to establish a new department for peace building so that the country has its own standing internal mediation system.

In Kyrgyzstan, the UNDP facilitated dialogue between civil society, the electoral commission and security agencies.

In Kenya just last year, there was a constitutional referendum without a single violent incident, in contrast to elections just three years previously when 1,500 people were killed and 300,000 displaced. I am very conscious that the Foreign Office Minister here today, who has responsibility for Africa, takes an active interest in these matters. One reason for what happened last year was that, in advance of the referendum, the UNDP provided support for national efforts to reach a political agreement on the new draft constitution and helped to implement an early warning and response system that prevented violent incidents from cropping up, and local peace committees were strengthened in all districts of the country.

I could go on with examples, but we do not have the time so I shall give just two illustrations of the cost-benefit, which is also a consideration in times of straitened finances. Kenya’s leading business association assessed economic losses from post-election violence in 2008 as being $3.6 billion. In contrast, the 2010 constitutional referendum, which was plagued by similar tensions, did not see any violence, and the supported prevention effort cost only about $5 million. In Kyrgyzstan, the recovery costs from the inter-ethnic violence in mid-2010 were estimated to be $71 million, but the regional UN efforts to restore political and inter-ethnic confidence cost approximately only $6 million. I could go on, but I think that people understand my point.

[Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that in the examples he has given of UN funding and support the key is the local buy-in—local people arbitrating peace in their own countries? I am afraid that I cannot stay for the Minister’s response today, but perhaps the Government will consider doing as they do in the field of aid, and support local projects that are designed to resolve conflict as well as, of course, using military intervention where necessary in an immediate crisis.

[Simon Hughes]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. All the best evidence is that grass-roots initiatives that are long term, engage the village—and the tribes in a tribal community—and are led by local people rather than external agencies, with the support of the international community, are far more likely to be successful.

I want to put the matter in another context. There are various authoritative indicators of conflict around the world, including the International Crisis Group and the “Global Peace Index”, and they tell us something which, if we paused for a second, we would realise for ourselves: after a very welcome decline in the number of conflicts in the past few years there has been a recent increase in violence in the world. The point that I made at the beginning of my speech when I quoted from the article on the World Bank is that inter-state conflict is now not nearly as frequent as it was. The bigger problem is internal conflict, which is likely to increase because many places are afflicted by not just political and economic crises but environmental ones such as water shortages, and other effects of climate change.

The hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) and I have taken an interest in many countries where there has been internal conflict and civil war, and as long as there is increased pressure on food, water and housing supplies—the normal needs of a community for economic prosperity—it is more likely that tribal and racial tensions will grow. We therefore urgently need to see those environmental problems as a priority if we are to prevent conflict in many of the poorest parts of the world, because they are often the most likely to be afflicted.

[Simon Hughes]

It is, and two other things strike me. For example, west Africa is very rich in natural resources, but the benefit of those resources has historically not gone to the local communities for community development because the resources, particularly the oil, have been taken out by international corporations and there has been abuse, with flaring and so on. In other parts of the world, there is enforced privatisation of natural resources—water, for example—as part of a World Bank or International Monetary Fund programme that has actually reduced the capacity of the community to develop in its own way.

I want to make just two other general points and then end with some questions. I do not want to set out the Government’s stall because the Minister is quite capable of doing that, and there is a good story to tell, but I want to push them to go further. The UK has been working very hard to bring its operations together across Departments, and we have the capacity to be one of the world leaders in conflict prevention. I encourage the Government, through the Minister, to go that extra mile and pick up some of my ideas. It has been put to me that we have 21st-century conflicts but 20th-century institutions. The best example of a case that I have been closely involved with in recent years is that of the Sri Lankan civil war, as it came to its end. In theory, the United Nations had the power to intervene, under the responsibility to protect, but it was completely paralysed and did absolutely nothing. The conflict went all the way, with all the implications that we now know. I sense that internationally, through the UN, and nationally we sometimes intervene too late, because we do not have the international levers that we can pull early.

Since the beginning of the current situation in Libya the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington has been raising the point that it is comparatively easy to intervene militarily. It is not so difficult to scramble together a military intervention, and it should be as easy to scramble together a conflict prevention mechanism, but it is not. We need to think about how we get the balance of decision making and priorities right, in our Government and in others. The people on the ground, especially in countries where there is repeated, periodic or cyclical conflict, know that it is jobs, justice and domestic security that are likely to give them the most secure future. An illustration that helps us easily to picture these things is that it is often better to respond to an illness by dealing with the early signs of infection than to wait for the epidemic. In the past, we have often responded to the epidemic rather than taking preventive action.

[Mr Slaughter]

The right hon. Gentleman has hit on another key point in relation to the Arab world. Not just in Libya but in all the countries of the Arab spring, the degree of violence and the difficulty, even if things go well, of creating civil society, is due to the legacy of having supported tyrants rather than democratic organisations in those countries over many years. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that that is a lesson that we, and all western Governments, need to learn?

[Simon Hughes]

I absolutely agree. There is so much, both academic and practical, that we should have already learnt. The age of the empires of the world mercifully is coming to an end, but there is still a view that that sort of intervention by force is, in the end, what we need to display as our effective international activity, even though all the evidence is that different sorts of interventions are now much more needed.

I am grateful to all those who have briefed us for this debate. It should really be a seminar rather than a debate. I commend Saferworld, which has supplied some very good material and I shall summarise its five points about the areas on which Governments should concentrate. First, it picks up the point made by Labour Members, namely that we need to understand the context and put it first, and that each context is different. Secondly, we have to put people at the heart of conflict prevention. Thirdly, we have to work cross-departmentally in Government. Fourthly, we have to work with our international partners. Fifthly, a crucial issue is the arms trade and the need to curb it—many of the poorest countries spend large parts of their funds on arms rather than on other things.

I also commend the work of PATRIR—the Peace Action, Training and Research Institute of Romania—and Kai Brand-Jacobsen, the director of its department of peace operations. Ministers and others will have seen its work. It has identified 22 lessons for country-level prevention, as well as lessons for international support and prevention efforts, improving effectiveness and preparedness, and identifying key gaps and challenges, and the way in which we can apply those from here.

I have, with the help of the officers of the all-party group, prepared some questions. I have given the Department notice of them, so I hope that they do not come as a frightening surprise to the Minister. I will then end with some key requests. It would be good for the Government to set out what they mean by conflict prevention and which programmes they are funding in which countries to prevent which conflicts—we would then have more transparency about the details of the Government commitment—and how they evaluate the effectiveness of those programmes. It would be helpful if the Government could regularly gather information from the existing data sets on work around the world and learn the lessons from it. It would be good if the Government would consider establishing an organisation similar to that in Washington DC, to study, educate and train in the field of peace building, covering all elements of policy, from grass-roots policy to international diplomacy in the voluntary, public and private sectors and the like.

What in-house training are members of the civil service and diplomatic service receiving on conflict prevention? Are we able to get the Commonwealth to do more? It is for ever looking for an effective role. As a big supporter of the Commonwealth, I think there is an opportunity for it to play a much more direct role in conflict resolution and prevention. In the case of Sri Lanka, it was a lamentable failure for a Commonwealth country to be engaged in such a situation. The Commonwealth Secretariat could work with the Government on the issues.

Would it be possible—I hope that the Minister will respond positively to this, although it is not just his decision—for the Government to agree to an annual opportunity to stocktake conflict prevention? I would like us to have an annual debate on the issue. We have annual debates on the armed services—the Royal Navy, the Army and the Air Force—and it is just as important that we have an annual opportunity to review conflict prevention in the world. It would be a strong signal marker of our collective wish as a Parliament and a Government.

Will the Minister tell us how much the Government spent last year on conflict prevention and on overseas military intervention, so that we can compare the two? Is there a cost-benefit analysis of those two forms of spending? Is there a way of projecting how the cost benefit would be helpful as we think, in these straitened economic times, about how we are going to spend our resources abroad? That would produce obvious answers in relation to where we ought to prioritise.

There has been growing cause for concern in Sudan in recent days, and now the Archbishop of Canterbury has expressed concern about the situation. Are we, in our overseas development work, supporting the civil organisations on the ground in such countries to help prevent conflict, rather than just going in and using more traditional responses?

Do the Government monitor the infrastructures for peace developments so that we can promote good practice in other places around the world? Following on from a point made by the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter), are we learning the lessons from the past year of the Arab spring about engaging with local communities in the Arab world, as opposed to just dealing with the governance in some pretty unsavoury places, so that we are with the people preparing for the change? Are we making sure that it is local citizens who are leading such developments? This country’s education processes are also an issue. Will the Government consider adopting the same approach as that in the Department for International Development’s policy paper, “The engine of development”, to make sure that we always have stakeholder dialogue—I hate the word “stakeholder”—between key participants?

The Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe has missions in potentially troublesome places in the Balkans and eastern Europe. Can we work with it to go to other places that look as though they are at risk of conflict in the future? Can we get better co-operation between the OSCE and the European Union in enhancing common foreign and security policy?

What about the places—this has been one of my perpetual frustrations since I have been in this place—where there have been stalled peace processes? Cyprus, for example, has been on the agenda every year that I have been here. There has just been another round of talks, which do not appear to have moved anything. We should seek to move things on. In the end, Northern Ireland resolved its problems as much through grass-roots movements from the community, particularly those involving women, as it did through political forces from the top. Cyprus desperately needs, and would benefit from, the same. Finally, is there any capacity within Government to expand the resources of the new stabilisation unit and the new strategies that the Government have put in place?

I hope that that is a helpful short tour of the horizon. I hope that the Government will say that they will seek to build a more formal and systematic approach, based on best practice, across Government Departments, and that they will accept that we need to beef up our capacity to lead on conflict prevention around the world. I hope that they will see the stabilisation unit as something that prioritises not just stabilisation but conflict prevention. I think that that has been the lesson of Afghanistan. I hope that they will be honest about the gaps and the challenges and give us an opportunity of annual stocktaking. Finally, I have one suggestion. I am always wary of tokenistic titles, but as there are three Departments that have to work together—the Ministry of Defence as much as the others—it may be that the Government need to think about who is the lead Minister across Departments for making sure that there is a driven policy for integrating the policies.

It would be a commendable and good thing if the way in which we organised Government was seen to give as much priority to prevention as it does to defence and military matters. A minister with responsibility for conflict prevention in the world would be a way forward. Other countries are setting up departments of peace, rather than departments of war, and are realising that we need to shift from ministries of defence to ministries of peace. We may not be culturally ready for that yet, although many would welcome it, but we need to move in that direction. I hope that this debate will show that a growing group of people in this Parliament and in all the Parliaments of the democratic world want this move. There is now a network around the world.

I shall end with a plug. For those who want any more information, there is a website entitled www. conflictissues.org.uk. I hope that this is the beginning of a debate that engages not just us but many others outside this place, and that the Government are ready to respond warmly.

Middle East and North Africa

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Tuesday 7th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hague]

We will see over time the effect that we have in Bahrain. It is important to have channels of communication to the ruling family and the ruling group as well as to the opposition forces in Bahrain, and Britain is one of the few countries that has both those channels, which our embassy in Manama has built up over the years. We should use those channels constructively because there is no solution in Bahrain other than one based on a successful dialogue between both sides. We have to continue to encourage that.

[Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

The Foreign Secretary has consistently condemned the use of live fire against unarmed protesters by murderous regimes such as Assad’s and Gaddafi’s, so why does he find it difficult today to condemn exactly the same thing by the Israeli regime? What protest is he making to the ambassador and to the Government of Israel and what sanctions will he consider if there is a repetition of these events, which go on week by week on all of Israel’s illegal borders?

[Mr Hague]

I have pointed out that the responsibility for the situation on the borders is not entirely on the Israeli side. I have made very clear our opposition to the use of lethal force and that the defence of borders and boundaries should be proportionate. Hon. Members should make no mistake about that. That is the message that we convey to the Israeli authorities. We should not be so short-sighted as to believe that in the case of Syria no one else is involved in trying to create those incidents and putting people in a position in which they are caught up in violent incidents.

Africa and the Middle East

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Monday 4th April 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

On Friday, the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz reported that the Foreign Secretary, with French and German support, intends to propose the recognition of a Palestinian state on 1967 borders, with Jerusalem as its capital, at the next Quartet meeting in two weeks. Is that true? If so, I commend that positive step, but ask him not to get sucked into the issue of land swaps and to maintain the right of return for refugees.

[Mr Hague]

I hate to disappoint the hon. Gentleman on something that he was going to commend me for, but no, we are not proposing the recognition of a Palestinian state. We have recently upgraded the Palestinian delegation in the UK to a mission. What the UK, France and Germany are putting to the Quartet is that the basis of negotiations set out by the Quartet, including the United States, should include 1967 borders, with land swaps, a just settlement for refugees and Jerusalem as the shared capital of both states. We are advocating that as an established basis for negotiations, but we are not advocating proceeding unilaterally with the recognition of a Palestinian state.

Libya (London Conference)

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Wednesday 30th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hague]

I will have to be a bit careful with my answer. Clearly, events such as the attack by coalition aircraft on a major ammunition storage depot in the early hours of Monday will have made a difference to the ammunition supplies of the Libyan regime. It is very difficult to quantify that, but it will have made a significant difference. Equally, the successful attacks on regime vessels that were seeking to blockade Misrata yesterday will have made a significant difference to their ability to blockade that city. It is not possible to put a precise statistical estimate on the things my hon. Friend is asking for, but one can say with a fair degree of confidence that, if it had not been for coalition activity, the citizens of Misrata would by now have sustained many, many more casualties. Indeed, it is entirely possible that the city would have been taken over by regime forces, with desperate consequences for many of its inhabitants.

[Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

The Foreign Secretary says that coalition and British forces should follow the letter of the UN resolution, and indeed the resolution of the House, but are they doing so? Reports coming out of Libya suggest that we are supporting offensive actions by the rebels, and there are mixed messages about regime change, including from the Government Front Bench. Does he accept that there will be a breakdown in the broad consensus either in the UN or in this House if there is not clear evidence that only humanitarian and protective ambitions are being achieved?

[Mr Hague]

No, I do not accept any of the premises of the hon. Gentleman’s question. What we have just seen at the London conference is a serious broadening and deepening of support for what we are doing under the United Nations resolution and I have stressed the importance of maintaining that. He can be sure that British forces and our allies are acting entirely within the UN resolution and I am not aware of anyone who is able to bring to the House any evidence that they are doing anything other than that. He would do well to support our forces in the difficult job they are undertaking rather than to entertain the idea that they are doing something different.

North Africa and the Middle East

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Thursday 24th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hague]

Yes. My hon. Friend is quite right, because overarching all that we have discussed in today’s statement is what I referred to in the House on Monday: the need for a bold, ambitious and historic programme on the part of the United Kingdom and the European Union to provide a magnet for positive change to the countries of north Africa and the middle east. Although today we are discussing the detail of what is happening in individual countries, that is all under the umbrella of a European policy towards the region that has to be drastically revised to come up with solutions and offers that match the unprecedented—in this century—challenge that we all now face.

[Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

With so much international attention focused on Libya for obvious reasons, other regimes in the region appear to think that they can use military force against civilians with impunity. The Foreign Secretary has commented on the matter already, but what specific steps will he take with Syria, which is killing its civilians in Deraa, and with Israel, which is almost daily killing civilians in the Gaza strip?

[Mr Hague]

In answer to earlier questions, I have made clear the position on Israelis and on Palestinians, and the need for them all to make the necessary compromises. We have also discussed Syria and the strong messages that we have sent to the Syrian regime, but the hon. Gentleman does not provide an exhaustive list. At this time, Iran has imprisoned opposition leaders and become one of the most oppressive regimes in the world. It also has one of the worst human rights records in the world. We will of course vigorously continue to raise those issues as well.

Middle East

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Monday 14th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hague]

I think it right to warn against belligerent language on all sides in this situation and not to describe any country as belligerent, but to warn against that and call for a reinvigoration of the peace process. I think that that was widely appreciated and perfectly well understood in the region.

[Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

May I, like many Members on both sides of the House, welcome what the Foreign Secretary said about the basis for a just peace between Israel and Palestine, especially on borders and refugees, although I am not sure about land swaps? I also welcome what he said about the expropriation of funds from Egypt, but will he go a little further, because the Business Secretary said yesterday that he was not aware that Mubarak had substantial assets in the UK? I will tell the Foreign Secretary who does know that: the Egyptian diaspora in this country, who are horrified about criminals coming over from Egypt, and the UK banks. Will he talk with both groups to ensure that we freeze and seize those assets?

[Mr Hague]

I cannot at this point add to what I explained earlier. We cannot do these things on a whim or a suspicion. The Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 requires us to receive a request from another country in order to take action immediately to freeze assets. If we want to initiate an investigation by the Serious Organised Crime Agency, we must have evidence of criminal activity or be faced with some emergency, such as a direct threat to our national security. We must operate within the law, but we are already acting on the request we have received from the Egyptian authorities today and are discussing what we can do more widely across the European Union as a whole, so I am satisfied that at the moment we are doing everything we can on the issue.

Egypt

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Monday 31st January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Alistair Burt]

I thank my hon. Friend for making a pertinent point. We urged on the Egyptian authorities the appointment of independent monitors for the elections, as we have done in respect of the presidential elections that are due, all other things being equal, in September this year. A measure of transparency would have been very welcome in those parliamentary elections, and we will continue to press this route on the Egyptian authorities.

[Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

There are a great many people of Egyptian origin in this country, including many of my constituents. No doubt we all share their concerns not just about what is happening in Egypt, but about the safety of friends and family. What my constituents asked me to put to the Minister is, first, that this opportunity for reform should not be missed; and, secondly, that if and when the old regime falls, there are likely to be profiteers escaping from the country with ill-gotten gains. Will the Minister assure us that they will not be given sanctuary in this country and that British banks will not support any attempt to take money out of Egypt illicitly?

[Alistair Burt]

The hon. Gentleman raises an interesting point. It was noticeable, particularly in respect of Tunisia, that the international community moved quickly in response to the Government’s requests to stop money that they considered to have been abstracted illegally. The British Government would consider any similar requests, should they emerge—but that is some way down the line, as the hon. Gentleman will, I am sure, appreciate.

Oral Answers to Questions

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Tuesday 14th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lidington]

The issues that my hon. Friend mentions are obviously important ones that would have to be addressed in the course of Turkey’s accession negotiations. However, the fact that Turkey now has an economic growth rate of 5.5% per annum compared with just 1% per annum in the eurozone indicates that Turkey’s membership of the European Union would help to benefit the prosperity of the British people and help, in some measure at least, to assuage the understandable concern that he expresses about migration.

[Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

Palestinian and independent sources estimate that 50,000 settler homes are under construction in East Jerusalem, where the moratorium does not apply, and more than 2,500 in the west bank, where it supposedly does. If the Government believe that the freeze should be extended to East Jerusalem and beyond September, but the Secretary of State is not prepared to go to Israel to say that, what is he doing to ensure that those two things happen?

[Mr Hague]

The Israeli Government are in no doubt about our views, which I stated at the beginning of Question Time. We regard all settlement in the occupied Palestinian territories as illegal, and we clearly want the moratorium on settlements to continue. No one can be in any doubt that that is the very emphatic view of the United Kingdom, which is regularly expressed to Israeli Ministers, and a view that I believe they will receive from most of the world. I hope that they take heed of it.

Oral Answers to Questions

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Tuesday 6th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

What representations has the Foreign Secretary made to the Government of Israel about the thousands of Palestinians in East Jerusalem who have their citizenship withdrawn every year, about the hundreds who are expelled from the city and, in particular, about the four Palestinian MPs resident in Jerusalem who are due to be expelled this weekend?

[Mr Hague]

That is the sort of issue that we want to resolve. Given that the hon. Gentleman has raised it, I will have a particular look at that and see whether there are additional representations that we need to make over the coming few days. When these things happen, they are unacceptable and they show that we must put as much momentum as possible behind our efforts to broker peace in the middle east. That is why it is such a priority for the Government. I will certainly look to see whether we can do any more about the point that he makes.

Gaza

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Tuesday 15th June 2010 Westminster Hall

[Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Ms Buck]

Yes, but this will be the last intervention for the moment.

[Mr Slaughter]

The general tone of the interventions so far seems to suggest that Palestinians have brought this upon themselves by electing a Hamas Government. Does my hon. Friend agree that, whatever the political issues in the middle east, punishing the Palestinian people collectively for exercising their democratic right is entirely wrong?

[Ms Buck]

I agree totally and that is the main thrust of my contribution today. There are issues of proportionality and collective punishment. The 1.5 million citizens of Gaza should not be subjected to the impact of the siege because of the Government that they chose—or, in many cases, did not choose—to elect.

Israel has stated frequently that the occupation of Gaza ended in 2005 with the withdrawal of 8,000 settlers. However, as it has at any time since 1967, Israel has remained firmly in control of Gaza’s sovereignty, controlling its borders, airspace and coastal waters and retaining the right to enter at will. Gaza is surrounded on three sides by a security fence, and a seam zone extending up to 1 km into the territory is enforced by snipers to prevent anyone from approaching the fence. Palestinian farmers entering the zone are liable to be shot at by border guards, while fishermen seeking to fish away from the highly polluted coastline are regularly fired on by the Israeli navy. Leaving aside the casualties of Operation Cast Lead in 2009, 31 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces and 116 injured since the beginning of 2010 alone. On 7 June, six Palestinians were killed off the coast of Gaza.

Since 2007, the control of Gaza’s borders has tightened further, to the extent of its being an all-encompassing siege. The people of that grossly over-populated strip—measuring only 10 km from east to west—have been denied all freedom of movement, have extremely limited access to vital goods and services and, perhaps most crucial, have been denied access to construction materials needed to rebuild the many homes and facilities destroyed during Operation Cast Lead.

The agreement on movement and access stipulates that 15,500 trucks a month should be allowed to enter Gaza via the crossing points with Israel. Since June 2007, however, the actual volume has typically been about 20% of that number. Between May and June this year, only 400 trucks entered Gaza—one third of the pre-siege level. The trucks are supposed to contain everything that the 1.5 million people of Gaza need to survive, yet only 73 sanctioned items were permitted. Items that were blocked—there has been very recent movement on this—included pasta, powdered milk, jam, cooking oil, school books and textbooks and T-shirts.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs Ellman]

The reality is that Gaza is run by Hamas, an Islamist organisation that is proscribed by the EU, the USA and Canada as a terrorist organisation. Its regime has led to this dreadful situation for the people of Gaza. That cannot be ignored; it is a fact. More questions need to be asked about that flotilla, focusing on that sixth vessel. What is the role of the Turkish IHH—again, a charitable organisation linked to Hamas and other terrorist organisations? What about the recording that was made in relation to that sixth vessel, showing that when the Israelis repeatedly asked it to land at Ashdod, the reply came back, “Go back to Auschwitz”? What about the fact that people on that sixth vessel were armed with metal rods with knives, and that a lynching of Israelis was attempted? I have no doubt that the majority of people on those vessels were genuine peace activists, but were they infiltrated by somebody else with other ideas?

What about the reports that we have seen since those events in the Turkish media? Families of people who were regrettably killed on that vessel have stated that their partner—the husband in one case—said that he wanted to be a martyr. Even more damning, what about the broadcast that was made on Hamas TV on 30 May, the day before the incident happened, when a university lecturer said that the participants in that flotilla wanted to die as martyrs even more than they wanted to reach Gaza? What a condemnation.

[Mr Slaughter]

My hon. Friend is repeating the information—if I can call it that—put out by the Israeli authorities in the immediate aftermath of the incident, for which no evidence has been produced. Is she seriously saying that, because Israeli forces normally get away with abseiling heavily armed on to ships in the middle of the night, when, on one occasion, people resist and nine of them are shot dead, they had it coming to them? My hon. Friend should consider the language she uses, even in putting forward her case so strongly.

[Jim Sheridan in the Chair]

[Mrs Ellman]

The detail of what happened on the ship will come from the inquiries, but the information that I have brought to this debate—I think very damning condemnation of what happened—does not come from Israeli sources. It comes from the Turkish media and what has been shown on Hamas TV. Those facts might be very inconvenient for people who do not want to know about them, but they are there and they are part of the picture.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

Before what I hope will be brief remarks, I point out by way of a declaration of interest that my constituency party has received donations from individuals and organisations supporting the rights of Palestinians, and I made several visits to Palestine, Gaza and the west bank in the previous Parliament.

As to the flotilla, about which we have heard quite a lot in the debate, we clearly have heard very different versions of what happened. As my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Richard Burden) said, perhaps for that reason more than any other, an independent inquiry—one that is seen to be independent—is demanded. The way the news came out was entirely predictable—an entire news blackout and suppression of information by the Israeli authorities for the first 48 hours. They gave their version of events, and with regret I must say that some of the highly partisan and unsupported accounts, blackening the name of people who were travelling on that flotilla by way of exonerating the Israeli actions, have been repeated in this debate and yesterday on the Floor of the House. That does not help, and nor does the way the Israeli information services deal with those matters.

[Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Mr Slaughter]

I do not think that I have time to take interventions.

Travelling on that convoy were many independent, well-respected people, including an Israeli-Arab member of the Knesset, Hanin Zoabi, and Henning Mankell, the respected Swedish author. All those people have given eye-witness testimony as to the brutality and violence of the Israeli forces, who wholly unnecessarily stormed the convoy in international waters in the middle of the night. No real explanation can be given as to why that was necessary. I have heard a number of those eye-witness accounts, which are compelling and have the ring of truth about them. However, the solution to the absolutely black-and-white situation that we have heard described by the two sides so far is an independent inquiry.

I have three sets of questions for the Minister. On the responsibilities of the British Government, the treatment of British citizens needs to be looked into. Issues include the violence and brutality that many of them allege the Israeli forces meted out to them over a prolonged period, and the confiscation of their belongings. There is also the refusal of consular access. There has been great criticism of the embassy in Tel Aviv for not pressing as hard as other countries’ embassies to get access to our citizens. All those matters require answers.

The second issue on which the Government should be prepared to act is the search for a more independent role for the inquiry. It would be useful to hear the Minister talk about the effectively tokenistic gesture of appointing Lord Trimble, who is known as a supporter of the boycott of Hamas and a friend of Israel, and who cannot be seen as impartial, and a judge who does not believe in an international element to the inquiry. That is not an independent inquiry; it is the basis for a whitewash, and it would be useful if the British Government asked for a genuine international inquiry.

Thirdly, the Minister was quoted as saying that he did not think that

“the British Government is talking about lifting the blockade”

on Gaza. That quotation, which was in The Guardian last Thursday, may be wrong, but it would be disappointing if it was correct. We need to lift the blockade on Gaza; we need not to ease the restrictions or simply to see a greater number of supplies going in, but to restore full commercial and civil life to Gaza. Again, that is something that the Government should strongly support.

We are talking not about factional organisations, but about organisations such as the United Nations Relief and Works Agency and the International Committee of the Red Cross, which have said clearly and in terms over the past few days not only that the blockade is “illegal” and a “humanitarian catastrophe”, but that it constitutes

“a collective punishment imposed in clear violation of Israel’s obligations under international humanitarian law.”

I would like the British Government to make similar pronouncements and at last to put pressure on the Israelis to lift the wholly unjustifiable and inhuman punishment of 1.6 million civilians, which they have imposed simply because they have the ability to do so and because the rest of the world is not, at the moment, prepared to stand up to them.