Clare Short: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department when she expects the Border and Immigration Agency to reply to the letter of 29 October from the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Ladywood sent on behalf of Neneh Famata Jalloh (Home Office reference J112636, acknowledgement reference B30489/7).
Clare Short: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department when her Department will reply to the letters of 24 May and 5 June 2007 from the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Ladywood on behalf of Nazia Saghir (Home Office ref: S1359575/2).
Clare Short: I simply want to say that, ugly and regrettable as the wall is, if it were on the 1967 boundary it would be one thing, but it is taking great swathes of Palestinian land and dividing communities from their land. That was found to be illegal by the International Court of Justice, and there is no excuse for it.
Clare Short: May I press the Minister to reconsider his view on Israeli access to the EU market? If we invoked the human rights conditionality in that treaty, we would have a lever with which to press Israel to do what he calls for. Does not our failure to use that leverage mean that we are colluding in the breach of international law? Will he reconsider his position on that point?
Clare Short: I tabled this debate because I visited recently the Palestinian occupied territories with a delegation organised by War on Want. It consisted of War on Want staff, myself, and Rodney Bickerstaffe, the former general secretary of Unison. I am grateful for the opportunity to report on our findings, and I hope that the Minister will take account of them. I have previously visited the west bank...
Clare Short: I have a lot of asylum seekers in my constituency whose applications have been refused and who will not leave the country. They are destitute, homeless and increasingly mentally ill. We cannot live with the increased number of people in that desperate condition. We must do something to sort it out.
Clare Short: People who were recruited on a bursary by the national health service to train as nurses, and who have qualified, have then been told that they are not entitled to work in Britain. Has my hon. Friend come across that? We expensively train someone whom we need and then tell them that they should leave the country.
Clare Short: I congratulate my hon. Friend and strongly support the campaign. The cruelty with which some failed or waiting asylum seekers are treated is abominable. The strong anti-immigration feeling in the country is partly caused by the chaos of the system and by lots of people being unable to work. That makes people resent those living at public expense who are not working. To stop an uncontrolled...
Clare Short: That was the point that I wanted to put to the hon. Gentleman. The State Department's preparation said that there was a real danger of chaos and internecine civil war, and that the answer was to take off only the very top of the Ba'athist regime and leave everyone else in place, because any professional in the country had to be a member of the party. That was the State Department's advice.
Clare Short: I strongly believe that it is essential to establish an independent inquiry into the route to war in Iraq and its aftermath for a number of profoundly important reasons. The first is that the terrible suffering, loss of life and displacement of people in Iraq continues, as does the death and injury of our soldiers and American soldiers—with no end in sight. There is no serious exit...
Clare Short: I shall come to that point in a few minutes. The second reason we need an inquiry is that the overwhelming majority of the people in the UK believe that they were lied to about the reasons for the war. Troops are still being deployed, and soldiers are still being injured, losing their lives and taking the lives of Iraqis for reasons that the majority in this country disbelieve. Our troops...
Clare Short: I voted on the basis of dishonesty, and of promises from the Prime Minister about the reconstruction and the road map, which were also untrue.
Clare Short: I think that lots of people supported the Prime Minister but now feel that they were deceived by him. People all over the country have that view. My view on what happened over the legal advice is that the disgrace goes beyond the present holder of the office. The Attorney-General's role needs re-examination. On any vote in which the House of Commons is to be given the right to decide on war...
Clare Short: The coalition is incapable of bringing stability to Iraq. That is the crisis and we need to examine how we got here in order to find another way forward. The instability is getting increasingly worse.
Clare Short: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department when Ahmed Omar Maruf, Home Office Ref: A1043799, a constituent of the hon. Member for Birmingham, Ladywood, will receive a decision on his application for indefinite leave to remain following his in time application in August 2006.
Clare Short: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department when Yousef Ahmedali HO ref: A1142900, a constituent of the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Ladywood, will receive notice of a decision on his case.
Clare Short: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department when he will reply to the letter dated 7 February from the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Ladywood on the briefing on the arrests made in Birmingham of nine young men for terrorist offences.
Clare Short: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department when George Barango, Ref: B401610, a constituent of the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Ladywood, will receive a notice of decision on his application made on 8 October 1999.
Clare Short: I wish to make three points in the short time available tonight. First, the decision does not need to be made now, and the argument that it must is an effort to embarrass the Liberal Democrats and is not credible. The Prime Minister said at Prime Minister's Question Time that the next Parliament could revisit the decision, which makes it clear that the decision does not have to be made...
Clare Short: My right hon. Friend will remember that when we on the national executive were persuaded by his policy document, we made a commitment to try to come out of nuclear possession together with all the other smaller nuclear powers. Does he think that that part of the policy was ever honoured or that any serious effort was put behind it?
