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12 Jan 2010 : Column 183WH—continued
Several hon. Members raised the issue of costs. The figures referred to this morning are projected costs of £50 million by 2011, on the existing past presence test. That is what we project at the most, and that was our reply to the parliamentary question tabled by the hon. Member for North Thanet. That does not take account
of what would happen without the past presence test, if benefits were backdated in the way that the hon. Gentleman argued for.
Mr. Gale: Where are the 20,000 people?
Jonathan Shaw: On the basis of the number of people moving abroad and who have already moved abroad, and the cases that have come up so far, we make a general estimate. I shall set out our method in more detail for the hon. Gentleman, in a letter that I shall ensure is placed in the Library. As I have said, we estimate what the figure will be at the most, but we obviously need to be cautious when accounting for public expenditure.
The hon. Member for Edinburgh, West (John Barrett) talked about savings. It is a reasonable point that other savings will be made when people move abroad; but, of course, people's patterns and plans change. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman has met people who have moved to Spain and then decided to move back to the UK, as of course they are entitled to do. It is difficult to make projections relating to people's behaviour and the social services they will use.
In most cases, when people are dissatisfied with a Department's decision they have the right to appeal to an independent tribunal.
Mr. Harper: On the point about cost, the Minister has clarified the answer that he gave Parliament about what would happen if the past presence test were used, and without backdating. Has the Department made any estimates of the costs of the two elements? How much would it cost if claims were backdated to the point when people left the UK, and what would the situation be without the past presence test? Has the Department made those estimates, and can the Minister furnish us with the information today, or include it in his letter to my hon. Friend the Member for North Thanet?
Jonathan Shaw: I shall certainly ensure that we can provide a response on the costings, to take into account not applying the past presence test, as the hon. Gentleman suggests.
We have identified and submitted a small number of cases for tribunal hearings and applied for those appeals to be appointed as lead cases. I know that there has been some criticism of the delay, but obviously hon. Members will be aware that the tribunal service is the responsibility of the Ministry of Justice and I will ensure that the criticisms are passed to that Department.
The need to get things right and deal with the delays is because the benefits were designed before the rulings came into being, as the hon. Member for Hexham noted. We have had to get the system right. It is not the case that we have been wantonly disingenuous and dragged our heels, as some Members have tried to characterise the Government's behaviour. Members should look at the track record in terms of the benefits that the Government have paid out to disabled people and compare it to that of other Governments. I think our record stands up very well. The hon. Member for Forest of Dean made a point about Polish workers and talked about how some extreme parties would use that case. Perhaps he should not fan those flames in the way that he did.
Mr. Gale: All we are asking for is consistency. The Government appear to be perfectly prepared to pay people who now live in the Minister's constituency, or people who live in my constituency in Kent, considerable sums of money, in the form of benefits decreed by the European Union-I have no problem with that. That money is paid to people who are not resident in the United Kingdom, people who have come here and paid no taxes, no rates, no nothing, for the majority of their working lives. They may be paying taxes now, but they have not paid them for 30, 40 or 50 years. Therefore, we cannot understand why United Kingdom citizens-UK passport holders-who are now resident in European countries are being discriminated against, and those citizens cannot understand it themselves. That is the point. It has nothing to do with racism, extremism or anything else.
Jonathan Shaw: I am pleased that the hon. Gentleman made that point, because it contrasts with the efforts of his colleague, the hon. Member for Forest of Dean-[Hon. Members: "No, it does not."] It was the hon. Member for Forest of Dean who raised the point that I am now responding to and who set the tone. It is reasonable for me to respond to what he said. I happen to disagree with him. If he does not like that, it is a matter for him.
We will continue our dialogue with the Commission. We have set out why we believe the past presence test is reasonable and fair. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for North Thanet as he takes this case forward. I am sure that this will not be the last point we hear from him on the subject. I am grateful for the contributions from all hon. Members who have spoken in this morning's debate, which has provided the Government with the opportunity to set out our case.
10.43 am
Goldstone Report
11 am
Martin Linton (Battersea) (Lab): It is good to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs. Humble. I am glad to see so many hon. Members in the Chamber as I consider this to be a vital debate on the Goldstone report and the Government's attitude to it before the vote in the United Nations General Assembly next month and, possibly, in the Security Council the month after.
As one of the few people who have read the report from cover to cover, I regard it as one of the most thorough and thoughtful I have ever read, and a model of even-handedness. I do not say that the original motion before the Human Rights Council was even-handed because it referred only to Israel. However, the amended mandate of the mission, as agreed between the president of the committee and Richard Goldstone, was even-handed because it refers to human rights violations by all parties before, during and after the conflict.
The Israelis have criticised the process and refused to give evidence. However, a panel of prominent international lawyers under Elizabeth Wilmshurst, a former Foreign Office lawyer, looked at the report and concluded that it was not invalidated by the criticism, nor by Israel's refusal to give evidence-far from it.
I was one of the first group of MPs to enter Gaza after the military operations in February, along with my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Richard Burden) and the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr. Davey). We saw many of the same things and spoke to many of the same people as the mission. Our accounts were listened to, but we did not have the time or resources to cross-check every fact and assess the reliability of every witness. Richard Goldstone did so with meticulous care. I do not know whether to be surprised to discover that all the horrors that we could hardly believe were true.
The first strike by an Israeli jet fighter at 11.20 on 27 December caught a group of policemen on a three-week training course doing their morning sport exercise; 48 of them were killed on the spot. There were no allegations that the police force took part in combat, yet 248 members of the Gaza police were killed. The report found that to be a violation of international humanitarian law on several counts.
We saw the effects of shelling on the hospital and ambulances at al-Quds hospital. The report found that the direct attack on the hospital violated the fourth Geneva convention. We also visited the al-Wafa hospital and saw lumps of debris that were still smoking three weeks after the attack. The report confirmed that it was a white phosphorus attack that was reckless, unjustifiable and in violation of the Geneva convention.
Israeli paratroopers fired mortars into the busy al-Fakhura street in Jabaliyah, killing 24 people, nearly all of whom were civilians. They landed just a few metres from a United Nations school where 1,368 civilians were sheltering. In a sober, understated way, the report said that the decision to deploy mortars in a location filled with civilians was not a choice any reasonable commander would have made. The commander would have known that it would result in civilian deaths. A missile strike on the door of the al-Maqadmah mosque in Jabaliya, where 200 men had gathered for evening
prayers, killed 15 and injured 40. There was no suggestion that the mosque was used to launch rockets, store weapons or shelter combatants. That too was found to be a grave breach. The commander of the paratroop brigade in Jabaliyah, Colonel Hartzi Halevi, who has since become brigadier general, was in the news only last week when he suddenly cancelled a visit to King's college London because the British Government would not give an assurance that he would not be arrested.
A condolence tent, where relatives were mourning the victims of a flechette attack was itself hit by a flechette attack. Four mourners and an ambulance driver were killed and more than 20 were injured. The report found those attacks to be wilful killing, designed to kill and maim victims and, as such, were violations of international law.
One of the most distressing parts of our visit was talking to former inhabitants of Izbat Abd Rabbo, a village that had been razed to the ground; there was nothing left except rubble. The report confirms one incident that we heard about at the time:
"Shortly after 12.30 p.m., the inhabitants of that part of Izbat Abd Rabbo heard megaphone messages telling all residents to leave."
"At about 12.50 p.m., Khalid Abd Rabbo, his wife Kawthar, their three daughters"
-aged nine, five and three and their grandmother-
"stepped out of the house, all of them carrying white flags. Less than 10 metres from the door was a tank, turned towards their house. Two soldiers were sitting on top of it having a snack (one was eating chips, the other chocolate, according to one of the witnesses). The family stood still, waiting for orders from the soldiers as to what they should do, but none was given. Without warning, a third soldier emerged from inside the tank and started shooting at the three girls and then also at their grandmother."
The girls and the grandmother died. Their parents
"shouted for help and a neighbour, who was an ambulance driver and had his ambulance parked next to his house, decided to come to their help. He put on his ambulance crew clothes and asked his son to put on a fluorescent jacket. They had driven a few metres from their house...when Israeli soldiers...ordered them to halt and get out of the vehicle."
"The soldiers ordered him and his son to undress and then re-dress. They then ordered them to abandon the ambulance and to walk towards Jabaliyah...The family decided that they had to make an attempt to walk to Jabaliyah".
The parents carried the girls on their shoulders and the grandmother was carried by family members.
The verdict of the Goldstone report was that the soldier "deliberately directed lethal fire" at the girls and their grandmother and that the soldiers knew that the ambulance driver
"did not constitute a threat"
and deliberately aggravated the consequences of the shooting by forcing him to abandon the ambulance.
That is just one example. The report investigated incidents involving 34 Palestinian civilians who lost their lives owing to Israeli fire that was intentionally directed at them. In each case, it found that the Israeli armed forces opened fire on civilians who were not taking part in the hostilities and who posed no threat to them.
Mr. Stephen Crabb (Preseli Pembrokeshire) (Con): I commend the hon. Gentleman on securing this debate. All the incidents that he has described, all those that were covered in the Goldstone report and another 92 cases have been or are subject to investigations by the Israeli military police and the Attorney-General, and that will lead to Supreme Court review. Does he agree that that is an appropriate response by a responsible democratic Government to criticisms that have been raised about their military operations?
Martin Linton: I will come to Richard Goldstone's views about the Israeli internal inquiries in a moment. He says that they are inadequate and do not conform to international inquiry standards.
First, I will mention another Israeli officer who cancelled his trip to London last week. Colonel Itai Virob, commander of the Kfir Brigade, was asked recently to give evidence about allegations that his men beat Palestinians even when they were not suspected of any offence. He said that
"using violence and aggression...is not only allowed but sometimes imperative".
"a slap, sometimes a hit to the back of the neck or the chest...sometimes a knee jab or strangulation to calm someone down is reasonable."
If one thinks that is bad, the soldiers under his command were even worse. An eye-witness saw them
"just knee [Palestinians] because it's boring, because you stand there 10 hours, you're not doing anything, so they beat people up."
"There were a lot of reservists that participated, and they totally had a celebration on the Palestinians: curses, humiliation, pulling hair and ears, kicks, slaps. These things were the norm."
I should also mention the attacks on the Gazan economy. One chicken farmer
"watched as the armoured bulldozers destroyed the chicken farms, crushing the wire mesh coops with"
31,000 chickens inside. The report continues:
"He noted that the drivers of the tanks would spend hours flattening the chicken coops, sometimes stopping for coffee breaks, before resuming their work."
Gaza's only fully operational cement-packing plant was systematically destroyed over four days. Helicopter-launched rockets were used to destroy the main manufacturing line. Bulldozers destroyed the factory walls. The report notes:
"The silo had not been entirely destroyed...so explosives were attached to its supporting columns."
"a very deliberate strategy of attacking the construction industry"
with no military reason or justification.
I will not go on about the beatings, the degrading treatment of detainees or the use of civilians as human shields. If people want to read about those things, they can read the full report, which I recommend. Goldstone's conclusion was that rather than fighting the Palestinian armed groups in Gaza in a targeted way, as Israel was entitled to do, it had chosen to punish the whole population. That was a policy of collective punishment and the report states that it was a deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate and terrorise a civilian population.
International law places an obligation on states to investigate breaches of the Geneva convention, but the report found that Israel's own investigations-I come to the point raised by the hon. Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire (Mr. Crabb)-were totally inadequate. Such investigations appear to have relied exclusively on interviews with Israeli officers and soldiers, those conducting them were not interested in interviewing victims or witnesses, and they did not start until six months after the event.
The inadequacy of Israel's own investigations has meant that the report attaches enormous importance to the principle of universal jurisdiction. The report considers that universal jurisdiction is a potentially efficient tool for enforcing international law when states fail to do so. If soldiers are not punished for such casual cruelty, if generals do not investigate, if the Israeli Government spokesman, Mark Regev, simply denies on television that anything of this kind ever occurred, it eats away at the moral fibre.
Bob Spink (Castle Point) (Ind): The hon. Gentleman is raising a very important and timely subject, but does he share my disappointment that Prime Minister Netanyahu dismissed the allegations as false prior to Israeli military police investigating them? Is that any way for the Prime Minister of a country to act in these circumstances?
Martin Linton: I agree entirely with the hon. Gentleman. Sadly, the Israeli Government have shown as cavalier an attitude to justice as some of their own soldiers, yet they should be setting the example.
Martin Linton: Just in case the hon. Gentleman was going to make this point, I readily concede that the report does not just mention the Israelis. The inquiry also found violations of international law in the actions of Hamas and Fatah. However, as Goldstone points out, the fact that Hamas is responsible for grave breaches of international law does not make the Israeli breaches any less grave. Goldstone worries about what he calls the "culture of impunity" that spreads through Israeli armed forces and the Government, who show contempt for the Geneva conventions and for international law as a whole.
We have to understand that the Palestinians do not have the power to solve the problems that face them, and the Israelis do not have the will. It is only the international community that can resolve the situation, but it must act decisively and courageously. Universal jurisdiction is one way in which we can show how deeply we disapprove of what the Israelis have done.
Jane Kennedy (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab): My hon. Friend has spent 11 minutes-12 minutes now-of what is a very important and interesting contribution to a critical debate concentrating entirely on the allegations faced by the Israeli military and Government surrounding the events of Operation Cast Lead. Is he going to make the same mistake that I believe Judge Goldstone has made in focusing entirely on the one side-the democratic Government who are themselves investigating the events-without dealing with the terrorism from Hamas?
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