Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I will endeavour to be brief too.
I think that across the House we all have a common endeavour: we all support a just peace in the middle east. That just peace will need to be based on dialogue, the rule of law and peaceful respect. Israel has a right to exist and a right to peace and security within its borders, but we also recognise that a deep injustice has been done to the Palestinian people, and that injustice is continuing. Everything in the middle east is connected to everything else, and it is important for all of us, as outsiders, to view it in totality rather than through a particular prism.
We believe that international law should be applied to all sides, and there are more than two sides to this dispute. Peace is made not among friends but among enemies, and difficult conversations with difficult people need to be taken forward to create the conditions for peace to happen. Dialogue is not supported by declaring stakeholders, however unpalatable, to be persona non grata or illegal. That said, we recognise, of course, the odious nature of Hamas. As a gay man, I need no reminder of the reality of that obnoxious organisation.
Proscribing all of Hamas will bring the UK in line with the US, all EU states, Japan and Canada, and Australia is in the process of adopting similar measures. We recognise the wider construct. However, we have unease at this proposal, and that unease boils down under three heads: the timing, the process, and the implications of this proposal in the real world.
On the timing, why is this being done now? I listened with great attention to the Minister. I did not find much I disagreed with, but I also did not find much that we could not have heard two or three years ago. Hamas was an odious organisation as the EU proscribed it; the
UK took a different path. That that line is being changed now begs more questions than we have had answers today.
As recently as 18 months ago, in response to a written parliamentary question in June 2020, Minister Brokenshire set out the UK Government’s position as follows:
“The political wing of Hamas is not proscribed as it is considered that there is a clear distinction between Hamas’s military and political wings.”
That was the position very recently. I have not heard much today to suggest that much has changed. I would hate to think that this measure has been brought forward for domestic or, indeed, party political purposes, playing fast and loose with peace in the middle east—an issue that we must all take gravely seriously.
On the process, the Australian Parliament has just concluded a thoroughgoing review of this very question. Where was the UK Parliament’s similar review? Where was the engagement of Parliament in these processes? I do not doubt that there has been a process, but this House has not heard much of it. The House needs far greater opportunity to scrutinise how we got to this proposal, rather than just the opportunity to nod it through. The Australian Parliament has reached broadly the same conclusion, so I am not necessarily disagreeing with the proposal; I am, however, querying how we got here.
As Members on both sides of the House have already asked, what consultation has there been with allies—especially countries, such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia, that do not proscribe Hamas but have back-channel dealings with it, on both finance and other matters? Crucially, what consultation has there been with the humanitarian non-governmental organisation community?