Daniel Kawcyznski MP apologises to Spectator contributor Melanie Phillips
I am glad to have this opportunity to respond to Melanie Phillips’s criticism of my involvement in the International Development Committee’s report on “The Humanitarian and Development Situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.” I’d like to apologise to her for my reaction and explain to her and her readers why I responded so passionately to her assertion, “shame on all of them.”
It is one of the ironies of our age that as more and more information is available, the less thoroughly it is sometimes read. There are many positives that result from this wealth of information, from the increased oversight of Government by parliamentarians, to the scrutiny of both by the press. But there is also a danger of becoming a nation of headlines, of tending to see things only in black and white.
This brings two responsibilities, one for readers – to ensure that they see past the headline to the origin of the information, and one for the author – to control what is written in such a way as to limit its misinterpretation.
If I accused Melanie Phillips of failing to meet the former, then I am definitely guilty with respect to the latter. I felt that she had jumped to a conclusion: assuming that because my name was on the report, I agreed with all its suggestions. There is much to be commended in the report – and considering the extent of the humanitarian suffering in the Occupied Territories, it was a vital undertaking – but I do not agree with all of it, in particular the recommendation that Hamas be included in negotiations before foregoing terror. However, by not publicising these objections and ensuring that my beliefs were explicitly clear, I made such a reading more likely.
For this reason, I would like to make a simple apology to Melanie. I was wrong to call into question her journalistic energy or integrity. I do believe though that it is important to look beyond the headline, at the difficulties inherent in Committee reports and the good work they undertake, which the media does not always bother to publicise.
Select Committees
This need for clarity is not helped by the murky complexity of the parliamentary select committees that oversee each policy area, knowledge of which is required to understand my predicament.
The aim of the committees is to establish a single, consensus-driven analysis, and as an individual it is extremely difficult to get a minority opinion into a report. Erskine May is the authoritative guide to parliamentary procedure, and states that, “It is the opinion of the committee, as a committee, not that of the individual Members, which is required by the House, and, failing unanimity, the conclusions agreed to by the majority are the conclusions of the committee.” A report cannot include counterstatements, memorandum of dissent, protest or indeed any observations, “not subscribed to by the majority.”
On the purely anecdotal evidence of a Select Committee Clerk, it is my understanding that minority or alternative reports are very rare. In seven years with select committees, he had only seen one instance of a Member tabling a minority report.
There are two paths open to a Member to record his disapproval. First by, “dividing the committee against those paragraphs to which he objects, or against the entire report,” or secondly by taking the extreme measure of moving an amendment to leave out the name of the Member altogether.
There are many aspects of this report that are excellent; many of the recommendations are essential for humanitarian and development progress in the Occupied Territories, which I hope to make clear later on. As such, I believed it would be an error to throw the baby out with the bathwater, and the only option I was left with was tabling amendments.
That I didn’t do so myself, I regret. However, I did work extremely closely with my colleague Stephen Crabb MP on his amendments. Stephen and I are close friends, and we spent many hours talking over our objections: I strongly agreed with all of the suggested changes that he tabled. Further evidence of the difficulty of making one’s point in select committees is the fact that, despite substantial disagreements, Stephen only forced the issue on two paragraphs out of 89.
That the record doesn’t show my support for Stephen is only a result of being unable to stay for the vote on July 17th. As you can imagine, finding the time for 11 MPs to debate a report is a challenging task and it is not unusual for Members to be called away, or indeed be unable to attend in the first place. I had another pressing engagement in the House and it was only that that prevented me from being able to stay and vote with Stephen.
Sadly my vote was a moot point anyway, as Stephen’s changes were voted down by four to one. It is little solace that my absence was not the cause of these defeats.
Select committees are relatively new to me. I have only sat on the International Development Committee since March, at which point this report was already under way, and I defer to members with much greater foreign affairs experience than myself such as John Battle MP, a man I admire greatly who worked as a Foreign Office Minister. Committees make every effort to work as a team to reach a consensus, and in the pursuit of this aim, compromises are sought. With regards to negotiations with Hamas however, no such compromise should be possible.
A Report Overshadowed
It must not be forgotten that there are many laudable features of the report, and it is a significant failing when people allow the controversial parts of a story to eclipse so completely in the national media, the bulk of an otherwise excellent report.
The Committee identifies restrictions on the freedom of movement in, and access to, the Occupied Territories as a central obstacle to development and observing that, “the Government of Israel signed up to the Agreement on Movement and Access in 2005,” and calls for it, “to respect such commitments.” The report is also unafraid to argue that, “the policy of seeking to isolate Hamas in Gaza has neither improved security nor caused Hamas to shift its position,” and that the UK Government and international community should have, “exerted much greater diplomatic pressure on the Government of Israel to lift the blockade in practice.”
Clearly the ongoing conflict between Hamas and Israel is not conducive to development in Palestine – stability is essential – and so the Committee is right to look at how the political developments of the peace process affect the humanitarian situation, if not to offer unsolicited foreign policy advice.
Other parts of the report that are ignored include the assessment of private sector economic projects such as Jenin Industrial Park, and the request that Palestinian students be permitted to take up university places abroad. How a decision to fund a UN “humanitarian access cell” to the tune of £800,000, for example, can pass without comment by the media is beyond me.
If I had objected to the whole report, I would have rejected important warnings on the danger of, “parallel (economic) universes,” and the humanitarian consequences of restricted fuel supply including the pollution of 90% of tap water. These are the difficulties I faced.
The Report’s Mistakes
I was extremely disappointed with three elements of the report: the advocacy of negotiations with Hamas without insisting on the acceptance of the Quartet’s principles; the anti-Israeli tone of the report; and the Committee’s decision to make foreign policy proposals that were beyond its remit.
That is why I wrote a press release outlining the areas I felt unable to accept, and a justification for it, which I sent to the Committee Chairman, Malcolm Bruce MP. For those who haven’t seen the pieces on Conservative Home, I argued that:
‘The underlying tone of the report is consistently critical of Israel to a degree that it is not of Hamas…the clearest example of this bias is in the phrase “Hamas must be encouraged to meet the Quartet conditions and Israel must open the borders and allow full humanitarian access”. While Israel “must” do something, Hamas “must be encouraged” to do something. Encouraging Hamas to renounce terror is insufficient, it must do so.
There is no moral equivalence between a legitimate sovereign state and a terrorist organisation. The report's tone and failure to make this fundamental point, is indefensible.’
I opposed the report’s weak stance on talks with Hamas, observing that:
‘In fact, the report explicitly proposes dialogue with Hamas not on the basis of acceptance of the principles, but, as a result of the opportunity presented by the ceasefire, purely with an “objective of moving towards its acceptance…
By urging the “UK Government to seize this opportunity” the report suggests that it is Britain's responsibility to include Hamas in the peace process. It is not. It is Hamas's alone. To suggest “dialogue” with Hamas before it accepts the principles but then only offer “negotiations” once it has done so is an artificial distinction. Hamas knows without any doubt the conditions required of it, and until it renounces violence, recognises Israel and adheres to prior agreements there can be no justification for further engagement.'
Damned if you do. Damned if you don’t.
Having laid out my position to Malcolm he expressed his disappointment that I was going to issue a public objection to the report as he felt I had not given him, or the other Committee members, a chance to listen to and address my grievances, or incorporate them within the report. I felt that I should, on balance, do the Committee the courtesy of allowing it greater discussion.
It was this decision not to go public with my opposition that meant Melanie Phillips was entitled to criticise me. In fact I should thank her for taking an interest in the report in the first place and for providing the essential scrutiny that politics requires. I think she will concede though that I must be in a tiny minority of politicians whose mistake was to speak too little rather than too much!
I hope that, whatever else it does, this debate serves to focus attention on the importance of the regional issues, from the lamentable humanitarian situation to the unacceptability of allowing a terrorist organisation extort influence over a democratic state.
I have certainly learnt my lesson: that in an era of spin and counter-spin, it is the duty of MPs to make their positions unspinnable, to make their beliefs beyond doubt.
As such I can promise you that in future, no matter what differences I have with colleagues, I will never again allow myself to be associated with any call for dialogue with Hamas until they accept unconditionally the three fundamental, nonnegotiable principles of renouncing terror, abiding by previous agreements and accepting Israel’s right to exist.