Israel: Ambassador

Baroness Northover Excerpts

Tuesday 17th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, I am delighted to say that my right honourable friend is alive and well and an excellent Minister at the Foreign Office.

[Baroness Northover (LD)]

My Lords—

[Lord Suri (Con)]

My Lords—

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach (Con)]

My Lords, we will hear from the Lib Dem Benches.

[Baroness Northover]

The Government accepted the Israeli ambassador’s explanation but, on Sunday, the UK failed to send a Minister to the Paris meeting on the peace process and yesterday the UK vetoed the EU’s support for the conclusions of that meeting. Can the Minister assure us that on Israel/Palestine the Government are not distancing themselves from our European neighbours and seeking favour with a very unpredictable new US President?

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, the UK position on the Middle East peace process has not changed. I appreciate that there has been some speculation over the recess—that happens during a recess period. But the noble Baroness rightly raises specific points, and I would like to address the two main points of those specific issues.

First, with regard to the Paris conference, we made it clear to the French, whom we congratulate on trying to take the process of peace forward, that decisions made at this stage without the presence of the only ones who can come to a settlement—the Palestinians and the Israelis—were not going anywhere and could simply harden opinions. It was nothing to do with the incoming President of the United States. However, we have to recognise that the US plays a crucial role in these negotiations, and has done so. With regard to Paris, while welcoming the French efforts, we made it clear that we would not attend the meeting at ministerial level, although we had a senior representative there—the head of our Near East department—and as such it was not appropriate for us to sign up to that communique.

I would like to put on record a clarification about the misunderstanding in the press to which the noble Baroness referred. We did not veto anything yesterday in Brussels. Federica Mogherini, the High Representative of the European Union for foreign affairs, confirmed yesterday that the UK,

“did not stop or prevent any decision of the European Union”.

From her mouth, I hope that the House will accept that we did not veto anything.