Andy Slaughter
MP for Hammersmith and Chiswick · Labour · United Kingdom
“I welcome the Bill, and thank the Government for introducing it and bringing it back to the House before the summer recess. It is the result of years of committed campaigning, led by the families of the victims and survivors of Hillsborough.”
“I know that case means a huge amount to the hon. Lady as a constituency MP, and I thank her for all the work she does on the Justice Committee. I think we have only begun to scratch the surface. This Bill will be a transforming piece of legislation. I will make one final comment.”
“This would be a new, independent public body that collated, analysed and followed up on the conclusions and recommendations made after official investigations into deaths and state failings, in order to improve oversight and implementation of them.”
“I think I have taken enough time, but I thank the Member for that intervention. This afternoon, the Justice Committee signed off a new major report on legal aid, which will be published on Friday. Those who are interested can read more there.”
“In the time that I have, I will focus my remarks on clauses 1 to 16, which create a new appeals body for immigration and asylum cases known as the independent immigration appeals authority.”
“From that visit, our diagnosis was that these are operational problems. There are two key questions for the House: will the IIAA fix the problems with the current system, and will it be truly independent from the Home Office?”
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“I hesitate to say this, but the Minister is being a bit complacent. All the organisations that he names are wholly laudable, but a PSU, for example, does not give legal advice. Pro bono services are excellent but they cannot compensate for the reduction in legal aid. Mediation is important, but there will be some cases in family law that need to go to a contested hearing. We would like to hear from the Minister that the review will look at the actual effects on the ground, and that where there is a deficit, there will be a genuine attempt to address that. Further, we are asking that he looks at the Bach commission report as part of that process.”
“I can tell the Minister what EU citizens think of his proposals because one in six of my constituents is an EU citizen. They think the proposals are bureaucratic and expensive, and that they will deliver second-class citizen status. He should withdraw the proposals and give EU citizens equal status, as they have now. He should do it unilaterally and he should do it now.”
“They are suggesting, through the backdoor, that EU citizens currently resident in this country are not going to have the same rights and will not be treated on the same basis, but will have to go through identity checks and residence checks in order to stay in this country. Why should they put up with such a change of attitude and such a change of status? The Minister should be able to say in response to the motion, first, that there will a unilateral decision, and secondly, that that decision will be for a status that is exactly equal to what residents have now. If she cannot do that, all the words that Ministers have said will carry no weight, and we will see that they are placing less value on EU citizens than they have now.”
“The Government should accept—I cannot better what the3million group has said in response to the technical note—that such people want the same rights as now, and they should be granted that without having to pay a fee and without having to go through a long and bureaucratic process. If the Government do not accept that, the signal they are sending out to EU nationals in this country is they are not as welcome as they should be. People are already voting with their feet. They are not going to make decisions in a year’s time; they are making them now. These are often talented people who could work elsewhere, and if the Government wish them to leave the country and work elsewhere, they should at least be up front about that.”
“That is a disingenuous phrase, because the document is a policy statement that gives EU citizens rights that are less than they would otherwise have. We do not know yet whether that will be the final version. The fact remains that there will have to be an application process, and there will be a fee. That applies even to those who have permanent residence already. There will be requirements on such citizens that are more onerous than the ones they currently have to meet. All of that sends out the signal that they will not have a status equal to what they have at the moment, but will have second-class status.”
“We have heard a lot from Government Members about EU citizens being valued and welcome, but words are cheap in that regard. I go out and speak to EU citizens every weekend. More often than not, when I knock on doors I will meet an EU citizen, because they are fully integrated into the community and so they are often the partners, husbands, wives or flatmates of British citizens. I am talking not about what I say to them, but about what they say to me. They are genuinely distressed and upset, and they feel as though they are being treated as second-class citizens. That is not just because of the failure to grant or promise them rights, but because of what they are being offered. The most recent document is the so-called technical note.”
“I visited the Jungle at its height. I agree that it was a far from ideal place, but does the hon. Gentleman agree that the conditions in which almost 1,000 refugees are now living around Calais are far worse?”
“At a lobby last week, I was able to meet some of the children who came over last year, many of whom are in my constituency. I am a governor at a school that has many asylum-seeking refugee children who are doing extremely well. Some of them fear being deported back when they are 18. I ask the Minister to comment on that as well. I say in the meantime that this country had clear obligations, and we should be proud to fulfil them.”
“A number of those children have rights under Dublin III, and some would qualify as Dubs children. Having Lord Dubs as a constituent in Hammersmith and Fulham is a source of great pride for us. It also keeps me on my toes on this matter, as one can imagine. The situation is more brutal than it was two years ago. There are no facilities for the people there now. There is a concerted campaign, as is well documented by the authorities, to drive people away using very brutal tactics. I would like the Minister to comment on whether any UK money is going in to support the riot police and the oppression that is going on there. We now have an opportunity to say what we are going to do—not only while we are in the EU, but if we leave the EU—to honour the conditions of Dublin III and honour the obligations given to Lord Dubs.”
“Almost overwhelmingly, the people in and around Calais are there either because they believe that they have a right to come to the UK or they have a particular reason for wanting to come to the UK. The situation is emblematic of many of the other problems that we have. We have heard two different interpretations of what the Jungle camp was like. One is that it was a place of utter despair, lawlessness, violence and brutality; and the other is that it was a rather thriving environment with shops, restaurants, churches, mosques and theatres. The answer is that both are true. We saw the extraordinary resourcefulness of the people there, as well as the risks that they were up against. Now it is just scrubland, but around the port of Calais about 1,000 people, including about 200 children, are sleeping rough.”
“I have had the opportunity to visit the refugees in Calais on two very different occasions. In December 2015, I went there with a group of local paramedics who were giving up their time voluntarily to provide medical assistance when the Jungle camp was at its height. Just two months ago, with Safe Passage UK and Hammersmith and Fulham Refugees Welcome, my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard), the hon. Member for Crawley (Henry Smith) and I went over and had a look at what has happened since the camp was demolished about a year ago. I do not pretend that the situation in Calais is the most dramatic or the worst situation for refugees fearing persecution, but it is on our doorstep.”
“We cannot sustain the position whereby there are 1 or 2 million highly unsafe products probably in daily use. Let us not forget the background: this company, against all professional advice, refused even to tell its customers not to use the machines. There is a great suspicion that that was because it could not cope with several million people suddenly saying, “I can’t dry my clothes any more.””
“It was remarkable that Whirlpool turned up at all because in the two or three years of various all-party groups and Committees asking it to attend, it has studiously refused and sent out the same standard letter. The Minister may want to say more about its attitude, but in terms of its accountability to Parliament, it has been extraordinarily disrespectful and continued, in the view of Committee members, to show that disrespect yesterday. It sent not the managing director or anyone with the competence to talk about the technical side of its programme, but effectively its PR man, who was able to answer very few of the questions, even the quite basic questions that I could answer. I urge the Minister to look at that and to deal with Whirlpool in the light of the attitude it continues to show.”
“and other organisations estimate that the figure is probably nearer 2 million. Certainly a substantial number of tumble dryers with a known fault that has caused hundreds of fires are still causing a problem, probably in every constituency in the United Kingdom. Notwithstanding whatever efforts Whirlpool has gone to—the Minister will doubtless say that the success rate in identifying a faulty product is about 40% compared with the typical 20%—this fault is so serious because of its potential risk to life and property and the number of dryers that more has to be done. It is absolutely clear that Whirlpool is not in the mood to do more. I pray in aid for that the evidence that it gave to the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee yesterday.”
“I will try to be concise in saying what those are and if she can answer them today, that would be helpful. In relation to the product safety notices for the Whirlpool tumble dryers, it is right to acknowledge that Whirlpool has gone to considerable lengths to modify those dryers—1.65 million of them, according to the Minister’s letter. There are other issues that I will not go into today about the speed at which that was done, how that was done, whether that is sufficient and whether further problems result. That is a substantial programme of modification, but 5.5 million dryers were manufactured. Whirlpool’s own estimate—it has to be an estimate because no one knows how many have worn out, been put out of use by other methods or possibly burnt out without causing a fire—is that at least 1 million are still in use in the UK. Which?”
“A year on, however, we are no nearer to an admission of liability or to any action taken by Whirlpool to deal with the people who, in many cases, lost their entire life: their belongings, their furniture and their flats, when they left because of that fire. The third and most tragic event is the Grenfell Tower fire, which happened on 14 June. We knew quite soon after the event that it was caused by a Hotpoint fridge-freezer that was manufactured by Whirlpool. We still do not know much more about that. I am grateful to the Minister for answering my most recent correspondence on this subject before the debate. Her response goes some way towards dealing with some of the points that I would have raised, but it also raises further questions.”
“According to the fire brigade and other experts, it was only through luck, the circumstance of its happening in the afternoon and the quick and professional response of the fire services that there were no serious injuries or deaths on that occasion. In the view of the residents and their lawyers, Whirlpool has dragged its feet, notwithstanding that from an early stage it was clear that the particular fault—the one that is subject to a product safety notice but not a recall—in the 5.5 million Whirlpool tumble dryers that were manufactured over 13 years and sold in the UK caused the fire. That is not in dispute.”
“Although the precise electrical fault was not identified, there is strong evidence to suggest that it was not the known safety fault in Whirlpool tumble dryers—the collection and ignition of dust and lint—but an electrical fault in the door mechanism. In evidence yesterday to the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee, Whirlpool said that about 20 such fires have been identified, but there has been no product safety notice, let alone a recall notice, in relation to that particular fault. The second event, which particularly concerns me, is the very serious fire at Shepherd’s Court on 19 August 2016. Late on a Friday afternoon, that 19-storey block of flats was fully evacuated and 50 people were made homeless, some temporarily and some for a long time.”
“The preventing future deaths report has yet to be published, but we have the transcript of the coroner for north Wales’s narrative verdict from 1 September. That inquest concluded: “On the balance of probabilities, the fire was caused by an electrical fault in the tumble dryer in the laundry room of the flat”. That was a tumble dryer manufactured by the Whirlpool company. I have read the whole of that verdict. It took three years for that inquest to report, and it is incontestable that the delay was partly because of Whirlpool bringing forward often spurious points such as whether the fire was caused by spontaneous combustion. That attitude, which was also shown with regard to the next fire I will talk about, is extremely regrettable.”
“There are echoes here of what happened in the white goods cases. Clearly, the danger of cabling buried in walls as a potential fire risk is in some ways even greater than the danger of goods that are on display. As I say, this issues goes a lot wider but I will concentrate on three events that concern white goods manufactured by the Whirlpool company. Whirlpool is not the whole story but I do not think that is coincidental. All three have already been mentioned, so I will not labour the points, but I will briefly go through them to draw some more general conclusions and put some questions to the Minister. The first tragic event happened on 10 October 2014 when two men, Bernard Hender and Doug McTavish, died at their flat in Llanrwst.”
“I hope the Minister and her civil servants will find time to look at it. This debate is not about one company, one product or even one type of goods—white goods or any other. Product safety goes a lot further than fire risk, and fire risk goes a lot further than individual products. My right hon. Friend the Member for Knowsley (Mr Howarth) mentioned cabling. I was involved in a BBC investigation earlier this month that revealed the rather frightening figure of 4 million metres of unsafe cabling from a now defunct Turkish company installed in residential premises in the UK. That may partly be down to the Health and Safety Executive, which realised that 11 million metres of faulty cabling was out there and tried to ensure that it was not used, but did not go ahead with a compulsory recall.”
“I acknowledge the many organisations that have supported us in these campaigns, such as Electrical Safety First, Which?, the London fire brigade and other fire services, and the Chartered Trading Standards Institute. I apologise if I have forgotten any. They are very different organisations but they have an interesting unity of view on what needs to be done. I hope the Minister is listening to that view as well as to the individual arguments. I wish to emulate my hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Limehouse in his precision, but that is not my strong point. Yesterday, I attended the evidence session of the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee, which is looking at this issue. I congratulate the Chair of the Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves) on that revealing and interesting session.”
“It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mrs Main. I wholeheartedly congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick) on securing this debate. He said some nice things about my expertise and the length of time that I have wrestled with this issue, but that is a fraction of what he has put in. I am grateful that the chair of the all-party group on fire safety rescue, the hon. Member for Southend West (Sir David Amess), who we have heard from, and the chair of the all-party group on home electrical safety, my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris), who I hope we will hear from, are both here.”
“I will press her a little further and ask when we will know that. We knew quite quickly that it was a fridge-freezer, which model it was and which flat it was. We know the model number, so that indicates to me that it was not completely destroyed. I would hope that by now there was some indication, because there could be a variety of faults. It could be within the fridge-freezer, it could be to do with its use or the cabling or anything of that kind. If it is a fault in that model or similar models of fridge-freezer, that needs quick action in terms of product recall and product safety notices.”
“It took another six months for Whirlpool to change its advice and only, as has already been said, under threat of legal action from Which?, which I applaud. It was disgraceful to see Whirlpool pretending yesterday that that was not the cause of its change of policy, but that it just suddenly lighted on the fact and, after a couple of years, decided to do that. I think all Members will be angry at the dismissive attitude that was shown. What are we going to do about the Whirlpool situation, specifically in relation to Grenfell? I am grateful for the Minister’s clarity in saying that the broader issues to do with the cause and spread of fire are matters for the public inquiry. We accept that. As I understand it, the specific issue of a fault within the model of fridge-freezer identified is a matter for her Department.”
“I am not sure the Committee has reached such a conclusion, but I sincerely hope it does. If anything will have encouraged it, it was the desultory way in which the manufacturers dealt with the matter yesterday. Whirlpool’s view over months and years was that it was perfectly all right for customers to continue to use the machines, provided they were in the same building and awake—not even in the same room. It persisted with that view even against the evidence from the Shepherds Bush fire where the victim, my constituent, was in the same room when the fire started and took every possible correct action: pulling the plug out, calling the fire brigade, shutting the door, and doing everything they could to prevent the fire from spreading.”
“With the best will in the world, given the job they try to do under difficult circumstances and with limited resources, local trading standards organisations are not enforcing. I therefore wholeheartedly support the Which? campaign for a national body to deal with and oversee such matters. I await the Minister’s response.”
“I am grateful, Mrs Main, for your very gentle chiding. I will bring my remarks to a close. I have concentrated on the specifics, but my final point is on the generalities. The Minister said that the working party group will report in the autumn. We look forward to that, but we are already disappointed by the fact that the group’s ambitions do not go far enough. There are three key issues that the organisations I have talked to are concerned about. The first is effective registration, so that when white goods are sold, we know, as far as possible, where they are. The second is recall and better attention to proper product recall when things go wrong, as in the Whirlpool case. The third, and perhaps most important in many ways, is enforcement.”
“Will the Minister say whether, as part of that investigation, action is likely to be taken to phase out or get rid of fridge-freezers with plastic backs, which is a particular concern raised by Which? and the London fire brigade? I expect the Minister has seen the same videos as we have of the extraordinary spread of fire through plastic-backed rather than metal-backed fridge-freezers. On fridge-freezers, would the Minister also address the Grenfell point? When does she think we will know the actual cause?”
“It is going to be called a local accident and emergency unit and a local hospital, but let us not get hung up on the terminology. It is very clear what actual services will be provided on the site if the proposals go ahead. They will be on 13% of the floor area of the existing hospital. That is what has caused these problems and difficulties.”
“The current events were, to begin with, a great surprise—it may surprise the Minister that I say that—because the plans for the changes at Charing Cross were made largely in secret over two years between 2010 and 2012. When they were announced in 2012, the plan was for a full-scale clearing of all Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust buildings from the site, and for a new clinic to be built on 3% of it. It was modified in 2013, partly because of the pressure and partly to give some cover to the Conservative-controlled local authority and others, so that they could get behind the changes. The new proposal was for what was described as a new hospital but is in fact—I say this advisedly—a collection of primary care and treatment services with an urgent care centre.”
“I deliberately titled this debate “the future of Charing Cross Hospital”, and I have been in contact with the Minister’s office to indicate how I would like to move forward on an issue that is a long-standing sore for the local community, if not entirely this afternoon—that might be asking slightly too much—then certainly over the next weeks and months. This is not just about history, but about a devastating series of decisions. They are not new decisions. The first plans to downgrade the hospital substantially were made back in the 1990s. I remember being involved in campaigns led by the former Member of Parliament for Brentford and Isleworth, Ann Keen. When she later became a Health Minister, I knew that the hospital was in safe hands. I hope it will be in safe hands with this Minister.”
“Next year is the 200th anniversary of Charing Cross Hospital and the rather more recent 45th anniversary of the building on the current site, although there has been a hospital—Fulham Hospital and its predecessors—on the site since 1884. It has a long and prestigious history. It is one of London’s major teaching hospitals and is part of the Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust. It does not rest on its laurels, and has an unprecedented, and growing, level of demand. I will spend just two minutes on what one might call the history, simply to set the scene.”
“I beg to move, That this House has considered the future of Charing Cross Hospital. It is a pleasure to see you slide effortlessly into the Chair at the beginning of this debate, Mr Rosindell. I am grateful for this opportunity to raise what is perhaps the central issue for my constituents: the future of the major hospital in my constituency, although it also contains the world-class Hammersmith Hospital. This issue matters not only to me but to many people across west London, and I am very grateful that my hon. Friends the Members for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury), and for Ealing Central and Acton (Dr Huq), are here.”
“I do not deny—I look for points of agreement if I can—that some of the objectives are perfectly laudable, such as specialisation and the bringing together of expertise on a particular site, as has happened with stroke services, major trauma, renal services and so on, even within the three hospitals in the Imperial trust. That is to be commended. No one objects to improvement to primary, social and community care, which may in time lead to less pressure on acute services. If the consequence is not just better health outcomes but a saving for the public finances, we do not object. The problem, and the reason why there has been a breakdown of trust, is that the changes are being advanced before we know the consequences.”
“I am grateful for the clarity that my hon. Friend brings on that point. What is proposed is the loss of all consultant-led emergency services—type 1 A&E services. The site will therefore lose blue-light ambulances, emergency surgery and emergency consultant services. That is a very substantial change to the health facilities available. The change came under the heading, “Shaping a healthier future”, which I am afraid my constituents regarded as a rather Orwellian title. That programme has now been subsumed within the sustainability and transformation partnership proposals, which are now nationwide, but essentially the meat of the proposal has not changed over that time.”
“In 2012 and 2013 we were told in terms that the land not used for health service purposes would be disposed of privately to subsidise the cost of building on the land that would remain within the health service. Will that not now happen, or is it simply that no formal proposals have yet been brought forward? As I said, this has been a hospital site for well over a century, and the hospital has existed for two centuries. It would be a great pity if that were to change on my watch and the Minister’s, particularly when the hospital is needed most by people in my constituency and others who have used it throughout their life and their family’s lives.”
“If they are not going to happen for another four, eight or 12 years, or however long, I put it to him that the Government cannot persist in saying simply, “We will do this when the time is right.” That creates uncertainty, demoralisation among staff, and a motivation for management not to maintain or keep up services because they are in effect throwing good money into a building that they believe will not be there in the foreseeable future. That is my first request to the Minister: that we have a proper assessment of whether those “Shaping a healthier future” proposals are still fit for purpose, as the Government believed in 2012—although I did not. My second request involves the land on the hospital site, because none of it has been designated as surplus land for redevelopment. I push the Minister to say what exactly is meant by that.”
“More eloquently than I could, he too led a debate specifically on Charing Cross, in which a number of peers took part. The Minister there responded: “there will be no reduction in A&E or acute capacity at Charing Cross Hospital unless and until a reduction in acute demand can be achieved”. —[ Official Report, House of Lords, 18 October 2017; Vol. 785, c. 659.] Those are very welcome words to have put on the record. I am sure that the Minister here will not resile from that today, but will there therefore be an assessment of whether the changes are likely to happen in the foreseeable future?”
“For many years Charing Cross has had good practice: people who arrive at that hospital and have something that can be dealt with by a nurse, a GP or an urgent care centre—in some way other than through consultant care—are simply filtered off, because all those services are available on site. This is not a case of unsuitable use; this is a case of growing demand, and lack of resources to deal with that demand. I will sit down in a moment, because I want to give the Minister a proper opportunity to respond. I urge him not to read out the brief again because, with respect, I have heard it a number of times over the past five years. I genuinely wish to engage in reassessing what has happened. I welcomed the debate in the other place on 18 October, which was called by my friend Lord Dubs, a Hammersmith resident.”
“Friend the Member for Ealing Central and Acton, last month the four-hour waiting time target was achieved only in 70% of cases for the two hospitals in Imperial. Figures are not disaggregated, so I cannot give them exactly for Charing Cross—only for St Mary’s and Charing Cross combined. That has been a regular pattern over the previous months and years, in particular since the closure of the A&E departments at the Central Middlesex and Hammersmith Hospitals. The population is growing hugely—as are the health demands, because the area’s population is not only ageing, but mobile and diverse, and those are not on the whole people who do not need acute care.”
“We have had virtually nothing in writing, or in terms of consultation or engagement with the public, since those announcements back in 2013. Substantial expertise in the community has sprung up in the vacuum that has been created by the health service simply not engaging—expertise through the hospitals movement, trade unions and local people generally. An independent survey conducted by a polling organisation recently showed that 90% of people in the west London area opposed the proposals—that has been borne out in every other survey that I have seen—and 82% think that they have not been involved properly in the decisions. I urge the Minister to listen to that, to turn over a page and to engage with the community on these matters. Going back to the point made by my hon.”
“That is an admission by the Government that the pressure on services is so great that one could not possibly think about the proposed downgradings at the moment, but that is simply to put off a wrong decision. It means that nothing can happen physically to the Charing Cross site, other than maintenance, until 2021. I have been told privately that it probably means a number of years beyond that, because the eastern part of north-west London, which includes the three Imperial hospitals, has now been put in the slow lane behind what is happening in the western half, so it is unlikely that any changes will happen before 2025. That is 13 years after the first proposals were put forward; that is a very long time in politics, but it is a very long time in the NHS as well. I am looking for something of more substance from the Government.”
“My hon. Friend puts it very forensically. The difficulty is that however much the aspiration may be to relieve acute services, most independent analysis—whether from the King’s Fund or the Mansfield review, which specifically looked at west London—shows that that is not likely to happen in the foreseeable future. The precious little additional investment in primary and social care is barely keeping up with the pressure on those services. That is where the lack of confidence comes from. However pious and laudable the aspirations, what is hoped for is simply not happening in fact. I welcome the announcement that nothing will happen in the current sustainability and transformation partnership period, which runs to 2020.”
“The Minister is being generous in giving way. What I said was that I applaud the aims of improving community services. My CCG faces having to make £17 million of further savings—that creates great difficulty for maintaining services, let alone improving them. The Imperial trust has huge deficits and, as far as I can see, most of the sustainability transformation funds for last year have gone to addressing those deficits. That is the difficulty, which is why I asked for a review of where we are going—because hopes are not being fulfilled.”
“The Foreign Secretary’s refusal to treat Palestinians and Israelis equally, as shown by his refusal to recognise Palestine as a state alongside Israel, is exactly the reason the Israelis are building in Hebron and, last week, annexed further settlements in the Jerusalem municipality. What will the Government actually do to honour Balfour’s assurance to non-Jewish communities? So far, apart from warm words, all I have heard is that the Foreign Secretary seems to support trade with illegal settlements, that he is setting new conditions for the Palestinians, and that he is blaming the Palestinian leaders for their own occupation.”
“Boroughs such as mine are putting very large sums of money into the police. The Mayor is doing his best—he raised the precept and was criticised for it. In contrast, the Government have made the Mayor fund the police pay rise out of existing budgets. Is that not just adding insult to injury?”
“My hon. Friend is right to highlight yesterday’s figures, which completely blow the Government’s cover and show that there is no environmental or economic case for Heathrow that compares with the case for Gatwick. Does she agree that what is outrageous is that the figures have been suppressed while Heathrow’s cause was advanced? Now that we have the true figures, we should see that the Heathrow option is a totally inappropriate development for London.”
“The Minister seems to be rewriting history. At the time the commission produced its report, we were told that the economic benefits of Heathrow were much greater than those of Gatwick. The facts have changed. Surely the Government should be looking at the revised facts and not just saying, “We’ve made a decision. We’re going to go on with it whatever happens.””
“I am surprised to hear the hon. Gentleman say that he supports trade with settlements that are illegal under international law, which is discouraged by his own Government. To fulfil the second part of the Balfour Declaration, regarding non-Jewish communities, do we not need to follow international law and end the occupation?”