My hon. Friend is quite right: when 80% of people who live in Gaza are dependent on aid to survive, it is a very important issue. My hon. Friend the Member for Heywood and Middleton (Liz McInnes), who will be summing up the debate at the end of the day, will be dealing particularly with humanitarian issues.
I shall make a little more progress on the point I was making, while messages are perhaps sent to Lynton Crosby for a different script. I drafted my section of the Labour manifesto, so why did the Foreign Secretary trust someone else to draft his? The reason, I suggest, is this: if we have always known in this country, ever since the Balfour declaration 100 years ago, that when statesmen and stateswomen in this country are prepared to set down in black and white their policies on the middle east, those words have an impact. When they are set out by the most senior figures as official Government policy, they matter even more. I know that the Minister has said some very important things today, but the point is if they are not put in the manifesto or not said by the Secretary of State, they do not have the same impact. That is important.
When the Conservative party fails to set out its policies in respect of the middle east in its official manifesto, people on all sides of the debate, particularly those in Palestine and Israel, are left to interpret silence in the way they wish. Many of them, sadly, will come to
the conclusion that I did, which is that the Government could not repeat their 2015 language supporting a two-state solution and condemning illegal settlement building because, on both those points, they do not as yet know where Donald Trump stands. Until they do, they want nothing written in black and white, because, one day, it might put them at odds with the American President. That simply is not good enough. We cannot overturn decades of established British foreign policy, upheld by successive Governments from both parties, just because this pathetic Government are happy to play patsy to Donald Trump.