Meeting of the Parliament 26 February 2025
I am grateful to Lorna Slater for making time for this important debate. It brings me up against an aspect of my life that I do not often talk about in the chamber—my Quakerism. I have spent a great deal of my adult life campaigning against aspects and aims of the arms trade. That said, the full-scale invasion of Ukraine added to my thinking on the matter layers of complexity with which I am still grappling, because I believe that, in order for peace to be sustained throughout the world—including that region, in particular—we need to arm Ukraine. It is a nuanced issue for me, and I will unpack some of it later.
However, I absolutely agree with the spirit of the Green Party’s motion on what is happening in Gaza. What the people of Gaza have endured over the past 16 months is unimaginable. Homes have been destroyed, communities have been shattered and loved ones have been lost.
When, last month, the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas finally emerged and was announced, it represented a huge moment of hope after many months of darkness and despair for the entire region. It meant that the work of flooding Gaza with the aid that it had desperately needed and been deprived of for months could begin in earnest. I reiterate my party’s support for that ceasefire, which is so vital to the wellbeing of the Palestinian people. We want the ceasefire to continue and all hostages to be released.
As we have heard today, it has been troubling in recent weeks to hear Donald Trump’s unhinged calls for the Palestinian people to be relocated entirely out of Gaza and for that land to become the so-called riviera of the middle east. It goes without saying that those plans are not only ludicrous but would cause chaos in an already unstable region, and would amount to a flagrant violation of international law.
Instead, we need to redouble our efforts to build a lasting peace, regardless of how remote that possibility feels right now. That begins with the recognition of a Palestinian state that is based on 1967 boundaries and a two-state solution, which is the only way to deliver the dignity and security that both Israelis and Palestinians deserve.
I turn to arms exports. As early as April last year, Liberal Democrats called for the UK Government to suspend supply of arms exports to Israel. For many years now, Liberal Democrats have called for tougher controls on the export of armaments to ensure that they are not used for potential human rights breaches and atrocities. We support the introduction of a presumption of denial for all Governments that are listed in the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office—FCDO—human rights and democracy reports as human rights priorities. As such, we accordingly believe that arms exports to Israel should be halted.
In respect of Scottish Enterprise funding, we need to ensure that the current human rights due diligence checks are as robust as possible. It is worth remembering the origins of the checks that this chamber now insists on. A cross-Government human rights due diligence test was introduced only after my party helped to uncover what went on behind a deal that Nicola Sturgeon personally signed with China Railway No 3 Engineering Group during a meeting at Bute house. No due diligence whatsoever was done. It was discovered that CR3 had been blacklisted by the Norwegian state pension fund for gross corruption, and was found by Amnesty International to have connections to human rights abuses.