Business of the House

Debate between Matthew Offord and David Lidington

Tuesday 18th April 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lidington]

Far from throwing things into doubt, the Prime Minister’s decision has, assuming that the people return this Government—it will be a choice for the people to take—ensured that there will be the clarity of a mandate behind her and her Government to deliver a successful negotiation, and to implement it over the course of a five-year term.

[Dr Matthew Offord (Hendon) (Con)]

Some Members of this House are labouring under the impression that the next general election will be a rerun of the referendum. Will the Leader of the House confirm that article 50 having being triggered, regardless of who wins the next election there is no turning back?

[Mr Lidington]

The wording of article 50 is clear, and it is clear that any change to the two-year timetable can happen only if it is agreed unanimously by all member states, including the departing member state. As my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has made clear, whatever side we took in the referendum campaign, we must respect the sovereign decision of the British people.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Matthew Offord and David Lidington

Tuesday 3rd March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lidington]

There has been a discussion between the Ukrainian Government and ourselves and a number of other European Governments and the United States about various types of assistance, including non-lethal military assistance, and there was agreement among those different allied Governments to supply help to Ukraine. We think that the training will enable the Ukrainian army to operate more effectively than it has been able to do up until now, and that that offer of training would have been justified irrespective of the Russian intervention in the east.

[Dr Matthew Offord (Hendon) (Con)]

Recent reports emerging from Iran say the regime has been secretly enriching uranium since 2008 at an underground plant in suburban Tehran named as Lavizan-3. What assessment has the Foreign Secretary made of this concerning news, and does he agree that no deal should be signed with Iran until the International Atomic Energy Agency has unfettered access to all the nuclear programme?

Israel

Debate between Matthew Offord and David Lidington

Wednesday 14th December 2011 Westminster Hall

[Mr Lidington]

I think that it was an ingenious attempt by the hon. Gentleman to import some completely irrelevant material into a debate about an important subject. There has been a full report by the Cabinet Secretary and numerous parliamentary questions from the hon. Gentleman and others. I do not propose to go beyond the responses provided in those documents this morning. I shall move on to the middle east peace process, which was the subject of a large part of the opening speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Aberconwy.

[Mr Offord]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Lidington]

I have five minutes to speak, and I want to try to reply to what has been said. I hope that my hon. Friend will forgive me.

The events in the Arab world this year reinforce the urgent need to make progress on the middle east peace process. We are clear that a solution cannot be imposed from outside. We believe that both parties—I emphasise that—need to redouble their efforts to break the impasse and resume negotiations on a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict before the window to such a solution closes. Neither side can afford to let the opportunity for peace slip further from its grasp. A successful outcome will require good will and a willingness to compromise from both sides.

To respond to an intervention by, I think, my hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere (Mr Clappison), if Hamas is to be regarded as a player in the peace process, it needs to show that it is genuine about making concrete progress towards accepting the Quartet conditions, which will form the basis of any enduring peaceful settlement.

We have been clear in our call for negotiations on a two-state solution without delay and without preconditions, based on the timetable set out in the Quartet statement of 23 September. In our view, the parameters for a Palestinian state are those affirmed by the European Union as a whole—borders based on 1967 lines, with equivalent land swaps; a just, fair and realistic solution for refugees; and agreement on Jerusalem as the future capital of both states.

It is clear from what I have said about land swaps that we expect—I think that both parties do—the final status of settlements to be addressed in negotiations. I believe that Israel’s announcement last month that it would accelerate the construction of a further 2,000 settlement housing units was wrong and deeply counter-productive. That was the eighth announcement of settlement expansion in six months, and there have been further such announcements since.

Settlements not only are illegal under international law and in direct contravention of Israel’s road map commitments, but more practically, represent an attempt to create facts on the ground, which will make a two-state solution, with Jerusalem as a shared capital, even harder to achieve. We have called on Israel to reverse its plans to accelerate settlement construction, and we are clear that we believe that all settlement activity, including in east Jerusalem, should cease immediately.

We were concerned by the Israeli Government’s decision to withhold tax revenues to the Palestinian Authority, which we believe was provocative and against Israel’s own interests, because it had direct implications for the Palestinian Authority’s ability to maintain effective security in the west bank. My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary made clear our view on 3 November, and we welcome the fact that Israel has subsequently released the funds. We urge the Israeli Government to maintain a predictable and regular transfer of such revenues.

I do not propose to go into detail about our approach to the Palestinian application to the United Nations; the Foreign Secretary has spoken about that before. There is no time to waste in making progress towards peace. Successful negotiations are the best way to give the Israeli people the long-term security that they yearn for and deserve, and the Palestinian people the state to which they are entitled. Doing nothing is not an option, and the Government remain committed to working with the Palestinians, the Israeli Government and other international partners to make progress towards a negotiated agreement. We will continue to develop our bilateral partnership with Israel, while not ceasing in our efforts to support both parties in finding a long-term and sustainable solution to the broader Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which has dragged on for too long.

Tunisia

Debate between Matthew Offord and David Lidington

Monday 17th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lidington]

The right hon. Gentleman is correct to say that those are important issues not only for Tunisia, but for every country along the north African coast. Certainly, when I have talked with ambassadors from those countries in London, they have expressed concern about the risk that not only extremist groups, but those involved in people trafficking, drug trafficking and other forms of organised crime might use their territories as through-routes to try to penetrate Europe. We want to work with those countries, which are independent sovereign states, to ensure that they are able to improve their governance in the way the right hon. Gentleman describes. It is in the interests of Europe and of those north African countries that they are able to do so and move forward on the basis of greater respect for human rights and enduring political reforms.

[Mr Matthew Offord (Hendon) (Con)]

Does the Minister agree that when such situations arise, organisations such as the BBC speculating about which country will be next to fall is not only unhelpful to the status of the Government and of Parliament, but concerning to people in those countries and their families here at home?

[Mr Lidington]

I have taken great care to try not to engage in such speculation today, but we live in a country in which the broadcast media and the press are free to express their opinions and to speculate. That is part of being in a free society.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Matthew Offord and David Lidington

Tuesday 9th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Matthew Offord (Hendon) (Con)]

4. What recent discussions he has had with the Government of Turkey on the deployment of Turkish troops in Northern Cyprus; and if he will make a statement.

[The Minister for Europe (Mr David Lidington)]

British Ministers raise the Cyprus settlement process with our Turkish counterparts at every opportunity. I last did so with both Turkey’s Foreign Minister and Minister for Europe on 23 October. The presence of Turkish troops in Cyprus is one of the issues that will need to be resolved as part of a comprehensive settlement.

[Mr Offord]

I inform the House that I have registered an interest, as I attended the Morphou rally just a month ago. In addition to the religious and cultural destruction suffered by orthodox churches in the northern part of Cyprus, is the Minister aware of the desecration of graves in towns such as Morphou by the siting of army bases and the parking of fire tenders on Cypriot graveyards? What pressure can he bring to bear on the Turkish Government to stop such actions and return those sacred sites to their former use?

[Mr Lidington]

It is important that the Turkish Government lend their full weight to the negotiating process that is under way between the two Cypriot communities under the auspices of the United Nations special envoy, and the issues to which my hon. Friend has referred need to be considered as part of those discussions.