Johann Hari

It is, on this subject, my first sliver of doubt. Seeing a rope placed around Saddam Hussein’s neck – and hearing the ecstasy of my friends in Baghdad, saying this is a sweet, lingering moment of justice – has forced me, for the first time in my life, to wonder if I really do oppose the death penalty at all times and in all places.

This is a strange jolt. For me, opposition to hanging has always been manifestly moral. Should the state take a defenceless, unarmed prisoner and break their neck? Obviously not. It is a sign of civilisation that you treat even the most depraved and despicable people with decency. And yet – I have to admit it – when I saw Saddam’s snapped corpse, I was pleased. I spent some time in ‘his’ Iraq. I saw the raw terror at the mention of his name. I saw the Marsh Arabs, rotting in rusting desert huts after Saddam poisoned their marshes and slaughtered their families for the “crime” of calling for democracy. So when my friend Ahmed – whose father was murdered by Saddam’s goons – said in a 4am phone call that he felt his dad was finally at rest now, the anti-death penalty arguments died on my tongue.

So should there be an exception for tyrants, the Mussolinis and Caecescus? This question forced me to go back to first principles. I do not believe in killing people to meet some abstract, quasi-religious standard of ‘justice’, where a death must be avenged with a death. No: the only justification for using violence, ever, is a utilitarian one – to prevent even more violence occurring. To choose the least controversial example, innocent people died horrifically in the bombing of Nazi Berlin – but even more people would have died if the bombing had not gone ahead, so it was not only justified but morally necessary.

(I thought, along with a majority of Iraqis, that the invasion of Iraq was justified by a similar utilitarian calculus. We were wrong: over 650,000 have now died, compared to 210,000 if Saddam had continued murdering at the same pace. I should have known better – plenty of others did.)

Of course, the defenders of hanging, the gas chamber and the electric chair as tools of everyday democratic government use precisely this utililitarian argument. They say that killing murderers deters other people from following their path. But the evidence shows they are wrong: Oklahoma state, for example, has had consistent murder rates before, during and after a recent 25-year moratorium on capital punishment.

It doesn’t deter dictators either. Is Kim Jong-Il or King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia going to torture one less person today? Of course not. Yet when dispensing with ex-dictators, there is an additional consideration. Executing them ends the perpetual fear among the population of a restoration. While it is nonsense to say this will break the back of the Baathist wing of the insurgency, nobody in Iraq today fears – as they truly, madly, deeply did two days ago – that there will come a time when Saddam is back and they will be made to pay for supporting his opponents. (Of course they have plenty more to be terrified of: over 1000 people are dying every week in Baghdad alone).

But is this enough? Does the relief and joy given to a once-tyrannised population outweigh the murder of a human being? No. In the end, I cannot find a morally justifiable explanation for my glee at Saddam’s death. The real test of your belief in human rights is not whether you support them for the innocent – the Marsh Arabs and the Ang Sang Su Kyis. No: it is whether you support them for the disgusting, the depraved, the genocidal – the Saddams. Today, Iraqis have achieved one sort of victory over their tyrant. But the greater victory would have been to say – you hanged; you tortured; you butchered; but we will not do that. We are better than you.

But how do I suggest that to Ahmed, who is enjoying his first happy day in a year? Indeed, how can we lecture Iraqis on anything, when – in infinitely easier circumstances – we have failed to deal at all with our own Iraqi-killing criminals? To give just one example: in November 2004, the US forces, with logistical support from the UK, surrounded Fallujah – a civilian city the size of Leicester – and forbade any males between the age of 18 and 60 from leaving. They then released a chemical weapon on the city’s residents – white phosphorous, a cousin of napalm – that burns flesh right down to the bone. There is no utilitarian justification for this; it is a vicious war crime. Somebody – Donald Rumsfeld? George W. Bush? – ordered it, just as they have ordered the epidemic use of torture and secret prisons across Iraq.

Once they have been punished, I will feel able to tell my terrified, terrorised Iraqi friends that this weekend they failed to defend human rights as they should.

[Last Saturday the Indie ran a series of articles on the faces to watch out for in 2007. I was asked to name the most impressive young campaigner, and I named the eco-activist Joss Garman. You can read some of his writing at the brilliant www.turnuptheheat.org]

The greatest crisis we all face - the drastic destabilisation of the planet's climate by burning fossil fuels - is finally throwing up a crop of campaigners to match it. There are many I could list - Sian Berry, the new 32 year old female leader of the Green Party, or the people who tried to shut down Drax coal power station this year - but Joss Garman is one of the most impressive.

Many of us know the raw facts: as Garman explains, "that 182 million people will die this century in Africa as a result of global warming, according to Christian Aid". But few of us have really taken this on-board. Few us us yet see the needless belching of fossil fuels into the atmosphere as a form of murder.

Garman, a 21 year old student at SOAS, is one of the few who does. "Our ability to live on the earth is at stake, and for what? So people can have a stag do in Prague," he says. He is one of the founders of Plane Crazy, a direct action group protesting against short-haul flights. "Almost half of all the flights taken in Europe cover a distance less than that between London and the Scottish border. They could easily be taken by train, which is ten times less polluting."

Garman has chosen to target flights - by anihilating climate change-denying corporate flunkeys like the "Institute of Ideas" in debate, or by sitting in front of a shameful Manchester-London short haul flight so it can't take off - because they are the only part of Britain's carbon emissions that are actually rising. "The expansion of air travel is making even the most conservative climate change targets impossible - and ensuring people will die," he says.

The post-Swampy generation of eco-activists are as determined to take direct action as their
predecessors, but they know they have to sharpen their science and their sound-bites with the same skill they dig tunnels.

He is fond of quoting the Canadian conservationist Farley Mowat, who wrote: "The last three decades of this century have witnessed the ignition of the most significant internal conflict ever to engage the human species. It is not the struggle between capitalism and communism or between any other set of 'isms'. It is the conflict between those who possess the means and will to exploit the living world to destruction, and those who are banding together in a desperate and last-ditch attempt to prevent the New Juggernaut from trashing our small planet."

Joss is one of the smartest members of this small band of the sane.

ANY QUESTIONS?

TX: 22/12/06 2000-2050

PRESENTER: Jonathan Dimbleby

PANELLISTS: Oona King
Michael Portillo
Johann Hari
Richard Lambert

FROM: All Saints' Church, Castle Cary, Somerset

DIMBLEBY
Welcome to Castle Cary, which is a thriving and very attractive market town in Somerset. We're the guests here of All Saints' Church, a fine, largely medieval building, in the heart of the community.

On our panel: Michael Portillo, was defence secretary in the last Conservative government but in a spectacular fashion he lost his seat in the 1997 Labour landslide. He later returned to the Commons and almost became leader of his party. He left parliament at the last election and is now renowned as a broadcasting polymath, making documentaries on all manner of subjects for radio and television and notably cuddling up to Diane Abbott for the pleasure of the politically prurient, or is it promiscuous, on BBC 1's programme this week. And as he is very keen for me to say - he is also a columnist for the Sunday Times.

Oona King lost her Westminster seat in a no less spectacular fashion but after a far more bitter campaign against George Galloway. She's now busy writing, among other things, her memoirs. Are you going to give us your fully unexpurgated views of your opponent in that election?

KING
Perhaps not but at least my memoirs won't be very long will they.

DIMBLEBY
[GAP]

KING
It means I don't have to go and get a job in an office.

DIMBLEBY
Okay, good enough answer. Richard Lambert was the editor of the Financial Times for a decade before taking over from Sir Digby Jones as Director General of the CBI last July. The other day - you may be able to glean his political colours or not from this, I know not - he was reported as saying: Close your eyes and you'd sometimes be hard pressed to guess which of the three main parties was doing the talking.

Johann Hari writes a column twice a week for the Independent, a job he's had since 2003 when he was named young journalist of the year by the media mag - The Trade Gazette. He boasts, on his website, that two eminent individuals, among apparently numerous others, don't care for his - what he writes. Naom Chomsky says he's beneath contempt. Niall Ferguson calls him "horrible Hari". In any case he's a very welcome member of this panel. [CLAPPING]

Could we please have our first question?

BENZY
Rob Benzy. Given the Guardian ICM poll published today showing that 7% of the UK electorate would consider voting for the British National Party what, if anything, do panel members think should be done to combat the growth of far right politics?

DIMBLEBY
Michael Portillo.

PORTILLO
I like to think that the threat from the BNP is exaggerated and I think we're in some danger of talking it up. There are places in East London and there are a few other places in the country where the BNP have had some success in council elections. But I don't perceive that they are near to a breakthrough nationally speaking. I think the best thing that we can possibly do is to argue against what they say. I think their policies are vile, I think they do put them beyond the political pall and I think that it's very important that we should say. I was recently on a programme with Nick Griffin, who's their leader, and he came over as plausible and articulate and therefore I think that puts us, as it were, into a new phase of campaigning against the BNP, which is that we have to be willing to take them absolutely head on and expose the nastiness within that party for what it is ...

DIMBLEBY
You don't - you don't run the risk in that of what you were saying at the beginning, from your perspective, of giving credibility to the party if people like yourself are prepared to engage in debate? Or you think you should engage in that?

PORTILLO
People like myself - if I were a politician seeking office I would still refuse to share a platform with the BNP but I'm not in that position any longer, I'm now a broadcaster. And it was for that reason that I engaged with him on the television programme with the intention - with my intention - of exposing him for what he was.

DIMBLEBY
Richard Lambert.

LAMBERT
I think the interesting thing that that Guardian poll also showed was a degree of indifference right now to the three main political parties. It told us that there was a kind of drift going on in national politics, that the Labour had been behind I think the Tories for I think for eight months but that Mr Cameron really hadn't had a breakthrough, his polling was still I think they said roughly where it was when Mr Howard took over. And what I read into that was the thought that actually there's no momentum from the main parties right now and probably for understandable reasons, you know Mr Blair is on the way out, Mr Brown has not yet been crowned king and that's a period of sort of drift in the government right now. On the Conservative Party Mr Cameron is busy rebranding, repositioning and he's policy light because probably rather sensibly he's decided it wouldn't be a good idea to come up with loads of policy initiatives at this early stage in the political cycle. So it seems to me - I put a bright thought on reading it, right now the big lions in the jungle are kind of either licking their tails or eating their meat or whatever they do and they'll be coming out I hope and I'm confident over the next year and when that happens I think that we'll see a different swing in the polls because they'll be making strong arguments, they won't just be sitting on the backsides. And I have an enormous confidence in the British electorate and I know their judgement's sound and I know they won't be taken in by what Michael correctly describes as an odious bunch. So I'm really confident that this is a temporary moment which will pass but we'd better make sure it does.

DIMBLEBY
Johann Hari.

HARI
We need to counter not just the BNP itself but the issues on which they feed. For 15 years now we've had the absolutely relentless demonisation of asylum seekers and refugees. Whenever you hear the word asylum seeker it's become almost an insult in the playground where my nephew is, you know, they use the word asylum seeker as an insult. So I don't think it's just about countering the BNP. For example, if you look at the right wing press that feeds out these lies, that pumps out these lies day after day and then the actual surprise that the BNP support rises. If you pump out sewage rats will feed on it. I was on a TV programme with Richard Littlejohn, not that long ago, who's constantly implying that asylum seekers are given vast sums of money, are all liars, are all here to rip us off. And I asked him very straightforward factual questions like: How much is an individual asylum seeker in this country given to live on? The answer is in fact £40. Now you'd think since that £40 is way below the poverty level, you'd think someone who writes about asylum twice a week every week would know that. His answer was: I have no idea how much money they're given. So I think it's partly exposing the ignorance of the hate campaigns that are led against asylum seekers and refugees. I think it's for example pointing out that asylum seekers and refugees when you add up - when they're allowed to work once they're here - they make in fact a net contribution to the British economy of £2.5 billion. So every single pension book, every single school, even single hospital in this country is better off because of asylum seekers and refugees. Even if you didn't care about the fact that these people are running away from torture. You have to counter the lie that what we do in this country is coddle asylum seekers and treat them well. Earlier this year I went to Yarls wood Detention Centre to interview a woman who had been detained, this was a woman who'd committed no crime whatsoever, she'd come to this country seeking asylum, was being detained with her 15 year old daughter and her six year old daughter, they'd not been allowed out of that detention centre for four months, they were effectively in a prison, this detention centre that has subsequently been exposed to have racist staff - some racist staff amongst other problems. And yet then you leave that place, you've seen a touch of reality - it's a woman who'd been horrifically tortured and you come out and you read the newspapers that say that asylum seekers are being given gold plated cars. It's that lie you've got to counter and by doing that you'll counter the BNP.

DIMBLEBY
Oona King.

KING
That's undoubtedly right what Johann is saying. I think you also need to take the counterintuitive position that not everyone who votes for the BNP is racist. In East London there are some people that vote for the BNP because there are resource issues that we still haven't managed to deal with. So for instance, there are people on the housing waiting list who are the perfect prey for the vile arguments that the BNP come along and say - Ah well the reason you are is because of these immigrants - and if you scapegoat immigrants it will make you feel better. So in answer to the question I think the mainstream parties need to do more to ensure that immigrants can't be scapegoated and also to look at the concerns of the white working classes which often we've ignored.

DIMBLEBY
He - Nick Griffin in, as reported in the Guardian, made a speech in which he appears to take the view that there is going to be an economic crisis, an age of scarcity, there will be a once in a 200 years opportunity and he says: When the revolution comes, the revolution which is going to sweep away this nightmare, it's going to come in Europe, it's going to come very suddenly, bang, one month they don't support you, the next month you've done your homework and the circumstances are right - this was a speech to some white supremacists in America - [indistinct words] they are prepared to support you. What do you make of that, is that garbage or does it have echoes which are rather uncomfortable?

KING
Well I hope we have these sorts of economic nightmares more often, at the moment we've had the longest run of economic growth for 200 years. So you know is the situation that Nick Griffin thinks will bring votes to the BNP I think he's wrong. What will bring votes to the BNP is first of all not dealing with the climate of xenophobia that we've got more effectively than we are at the moment and secondly, not really pouring more resources into community cohesion.

DIMBLEBY
Okay. Rob Benzy you put the question?

BENZY
I think it's very easy to be very complacent about the issue actually, I think the fact that nearly a quarter of a million people voted for the BNP last May ought to be a concern for all major - all three of the major political parties and I don't see any of the parties at the moment making an effective stand against the BNP and that is a concern that I hold.

DIMBLEBY
Michael Portillo.

PORTILLO
Well I think on that point it's almost for the reason that Jonathan Dimbleby raised a moment ago, I mean the main parties are uncertain whether to engage with the BNP or whether not to. For example, not to share platforms. And I think that is a very nice point, I mean for example I think it was Margaret Hodge who during those local elections, she's a Labour minister, and she said that a large proportion of her constituents were poised to vote BNP. I think that was a terrible error, I mean you don't in politics go round saying that another party's going to do well. And actually the BNP did do well, I mean I don't know whether one followed the other or not. So I think the parties do have a dilemma. I was struck by the little bit of speech that Jonathan read out a moment ago, it's interesting that here is a party that believes it will prosper when people are miserable, most parties like to proper when people are happy.

HARI
I think also - I think Michael just made a good point when he talked about when he was a minister he wouldn't have engaged with these people, I actually think there's been a big mistake that people have tried - for the best possible reasons - to anathematise the BNP by not engaging with them. The best way to discredit the BNP, as someone who's met these people, is to actually let people hear what they say. These people are nutcases. Nick Griffin had to warn his members to ditch talking about Hitler. They are lunatics, they really are. I was sent to cover a holocaust denial conference a couple of years ago in the United States and the people there loved Nick Giffin. These are such barking mad people that really we've got to get them on every radio programme we possibly can and their support will collapse.

DIMBLEBY
Richard Lambert.

LAMBERT
[CLAPPING] I think that there is though an economic question we should think about, which is this: that the whole process of globalisation has brought terrific growth to the world but there have been losers as well as winners and there are losers in our society and they're typically low middle income earners whose wages have not gone up in the last years, who are finding themselves squeezed by high utility bills and so on. And we have to be aware of the pressures that are building on them and I think that behoves us to be very careful when making the cases for free trade to be sure also that we're investing in skills, education, hospitals and schools for people in those brackets because otherwise they will be disaffected by the things that are benefiting the overall economy.

DIMBLEBY
Our questioner is nodding in agreement. We will go to our next question please.

GEE
David Gee. Can Tony Blair really expect anyone to take his warnings about Iran seriously in the light of past events, even if he's right this time?

DIMBLEBY
Johann Hari.

HARI
Well you're getting at the fact that Iraq has been such a disaster, you're certainly right about that. A very good friend of mine is an Iraqi refugee - she was an Iraqi refugee in this country - and returned to Iraq, I spoke to her on the phone recently, she was an absolute wreck and she said: Every day I delete somebody from my mobile phone because they've been killed. She was very much in favour of the war, her family had been murdered by Saddam Hussein. And I said to her: Do you think we were wrong to support the war? She said: Look I'm not even thinking about that, I'm thinking about how am I going to stay alive tomorrow. So yes clearly it's very hard to trust Tony Blair, the evidence is pretty overwhelming that he wildly exaggerated his claims about weapons of mass destruction. And he made a terrible misjudgement in trusting the Americans to think they were capable of mounting a successful invasion of Iraq. If you look at the Baker/Hamilton Report there are some absolutely astonishing statistics, there are over a thousand people employed in the American Embassy in Baghdad, six of them speak Arabic ...

DIMBLEBY
Against this background, I think if I can drive you a little bit towards the - of course you are right that that was the background but if you look now when he was asking for the formation of a moderate alliance of Arab states to pin back Iran, because Iran seeks this and this and this, is he right?

HARI
No, there are genuine - very real and very genuine reasons to be worried about President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, current Prime Minister of Iran. He has made repeated statements that he believes Israel should be destroyed and as someone who - I'm someone who's very critical of the state of Israel but the solution to the ethnic cleansing committed to create Israel in 1948 is not a genocide against the people of Israel now. So Ahmadinejad's position is appalling. The question is what do you do about it? Now Tony Blair's answer is that the way to deal with Ahmadinejad is to isolate him through the world and if the worst comes to the worst bomb the nuclear sites in Iran, that's clearly the implication - if you speak to people in Washington that's clearly what Bush is going to do, that's clearly why he's going through the diplomatic process. I don't think that will work for a number of reasons.

Firstly, I think there is a big problems with nuclear weapons all over the world, the proliferation of nuclear weapons, it's only, what, four years since Britain had to recommend its citizen evacuate India and Pakistan because they were so close to a nuclear confrontation. Iran needs to be seen in that context - as a problem of the proliferation of nuclear weapons everywhere.

The way to deal with that is the way that was created in 1968 after we nearly destroyed the world with the Cuban missile crisis. It's called the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty, it's a very simple deal. The countries that already have nuclear weapons have to cut back their arsenals until we get to zero and in return the countries that don't have nuclear weapons agree not to tool up. The entire world has disregarded that treaty and unfortunately Tony Blair is disregarding it by renewing the Trident nuclear weapon system ...

DIMBLEBY
Johann - Johann - I'd love you to go on [CLAPPING], in principle I'd love you to go on, I know there's more you can say and you may be able to get back in on some of the other things in just a moment but I want to bring in some others. Richard Lambert.

LAMBERT
Well I suppose I disagree with almost everything Johann just said in a way. I think that Iran is the serious foreign policy challenge of the next couple of years, more serious than other of the nuclear proliferators. It is certainly not going to suddenly turn round and sign up to the Non Proliferation Treaty. There is no possibility of the UK taking armed action against Iran and I don't believe there's any possibility of the US taking armed action against Iran, given the strains that it's now facing politically at home and militarily abroad and the consequences of an attempt to bomb a country, its nuclear facilities which we know are scattered all over the place, it's not like it was 20 years ago, it's a different story.

DIMBLEBY
So what could this - so what could this alliance of moderates - Arab states - if there is such a thing possible - what could it conceivably achieve to deliver Tony Blair's goal, if you share his vision?

LAMBERT
Well I think that - you see if you say, which I do, that there is no - that this is a very serious problem and a serious risk to the world and if you say, as I do, there is no military way of dealing with this then you have to have coalitions and partnerships and I think you have to get people in the region. Now where I do agree with you that perhaps Mr Blair's political capital is somewhat diminished as a result of the events of the last few years but you know he's got to do his best. So I feel that this is the way forward and we should not be talking about strategic action against Iran, I think it's complete madness.

DIMBLEBY
Oona King.

KING
Well I think it's clear that there will be no international coalition to take action in Iran. I mean the question is what action can be taken if it isn't possible to have any sort of intervention, if it isn't possible to get the Iranians to - well not even sign up, they wouldn't even consider signing up to the Non Proliferation Treaty. But what is the international community going to do? Is it going to say that we will not engage in intervention anywhere now because ...

DIMBLEBY
Sorry did you say - did you say they had or they hadn't signed up to the Non Proliferation ...

KING
They have not.

DIMBLEBY
Yes they have signed up, they have signed up to the Non Proliferation Treaty which is why the authority has been - was able to go in there in order to check whether or not they were abiding by it.

KING
Well then I'm completely wrong, I apologise for that, I was under the impression, having just done this subject on Al-Jazeera, god I must be really reading up the wrong brief, having just done this, I thought I was very well equipped to answer this question, shows how wrong I am. But in terms of what action can the international community take? People are talking about sanctions. One of the reasons action was taken in Iraq, eventually, was because it was thought sanctions didn't work and so the international community really has to grapple with what it's going to do. If we aren't going to do sanctions and if we aren't going to intervene militarily what options are left? And I think the only option left really is looking at cultivating the moderation that Tony Blair's asking for, is it realistic - that's another question entirely but it may be the only option left.

DIMBLEBY
Michael Portillo - is he to be - can he - to go back to the exact form of the question - can anyone really expect him to be taken seriously in his warnings about Iran given the past?

PORTILLO
Well probably not but I think it would be grand if the moderate Gulf states did take a stand against Iran, I think they should. But I suppose that's no more likely than say South Africa taking a stand against Zimbabwe or Britain taking a stand against America, I mean there are just some countries that don't take stands against other countries. I am rather confused by what Tony Blair is up to because recently when the Iraq Study Group report was published in the United States which recommends engagement with Iran and Syria, not only did Tony Blair accept that, he said that that had been his policy for a very long period of time. Now if it is his policy to engage with Iran what exactly is he doing getting out his megaphone in a speech that he's making in Dubai? That doesn't seem the best way to begin the engagement with Iran. And he'd seemed to show before in his diplomacy that he appreciated that Iran was potentially a very complicated country with many different strands and many different opinions. And it's quite interesting - we've already referred to the holocaust denial conference that was organised by President Ahmadinejad. That was followed by protests on the streets, that was followed then by elections that went badly for Ahmadinejad. So this is a country which is quite complicated with different strands and even with elements of democracy and so just following Tony Blair's pronouncements over a three week period, let alone over the period since 2001, I'm now completely confused as to what he's telling us about Iran.

DIMBLEBY
David Gee, you put the question, are you confused or do you have an answer?

GEE
I'm very confused, I don't think there is an easy answer. I wouldn't be - excuse me - I wouldn't be as sure as Johann is about the Americans not doing anything silly, there have been too many statements in the past where let's go and nuke them and I think that's a very real danger. I sincerely hope such a thing doesn't hope but it does leave me uneasy.

DIMBLEBY
Thank you very much. If you have thoughts about that or any of the other issues we have been or will be discussing you may want to call Any Answers, if so the number after the Saturday edition of Any Questions is 08700 100 444 and the e-mail address is any.answers@bbc.co.uk. Could we please go to our next question?

DOWDING
Gilbert Dowling. Given the higher than expected numbers of same sex marriages in the UK since the change in law and the recent marriage on The Archers, does the panel feel that the church should follow society's lead and accept this aspect within our modern society?

DIMBLEBY
I'll come back to you, if I may, later for your own opinion. Oona King.

KING
Yes I do, unreservedly and we're sitting here in a church today, I think it goes without saying that in the 21st Century no individual should be discriminated against in any area because of their skin colour, their religion or their sexual orientation or for any other reason. So I think the church needs to catch up, it needs to catch up with the modern world in terms of its view on women priests as well, it's not just same sex marriages and there are a raft of equality issues where the church's good work that it does in some areas, for instance on poverty relief, I think it needs to catch up with that. And it needs to perhaps in my view, which may not be a popular view, but perhaps moralise a bit less.

DIMBLEBY
And even if the consequence of that for the church, given the - the audience ...

KING
I did say it may not be a popular view.

DIMBLEBY
There are those in the audience who politely booed you for having the temerity to suggest it ought to moralise less. But let me ask you, even if the price of doing what you wanted is that the church which has already shown itself internationally to be capable of fracture on this kind of issue, were to break up in the process?

KING
Well I know it's going to come as a great shock that I'm not here to defend the church and it's not really - my concern isn't whether organisations stay together or fracture, whether it's the church or any other organisation, my concern is that people have human rights and people should be treated with dignity and equally and the church, unfortunately, has not done that to gay people in the past.

DIMBLEBY
Richard Lambert.

LAMBERT
Well I start off with the view that, from personal experience, that a number of my friends have had same sex marriages and it's brought them great happiness and so I'm in principle strongly in favour of that opportunity being available to people who want to do it. I think it's really for the church, for the Church of England, to decide for itself whether it wants - whether it wants and can make this happen. Part of the challenge of course is that the Anglican communion is very broad and contains - especially outside the UK, especially in Africa - communities would feel passionately strongly about these same sex marriages or homosexuality and issues like that. And I think that you would have to think very hard. I've never really put myself in the position of the Archbishop of Canterbury till this precise moment but anyway I think he'd want to think quite hard about taking an action that would bring schism to community which is strong and broad and international. And so I think it's a real difficult issue but I think it's for people in the Church of England to decide for themselves what the appropriate course of action is and it's not something that I feel that I'm in a position to advise you on.

DIMBLEBY
Michael Portillo.

PORTILLO
Everyone so far has been talking about same sex marriages but unless I missed something there they're civil partnerships aren't they? In other words under the law of the land they are different ...

DIMBLEBY
You have - Gilbert you have in mind what are technically called civil partnerships, yeah?

DOWDING
Yeah, civil partnership but not in church.

DIMBLEBY
A woman having a civil partnership with a woman and a man with a man.

DOWDING
Yes.

PORTILLO
Anyway civil partnerships. I mean I agree with Richard that a lot of my friends have celebrated them and they're on their Christmas cards, which are arriving now, the pictures of their ceremonies and it has brought a great deal of happiness. I do not believe though in the church telling the state what to do and I don't believe in the state telling the church what to do. Although we do have an established church in this country I do regard churches fundamentally as private organisations that should not be impinged upon by politicians and that are at liberty to disregard even the views of commentators and columnists and so on. So I think the question of whether we have civil partnerships, which we do and the question of whether the church should do something similar or dissimilar I think they're two completely separate questions and I don't see any reason at all why I should tell the church what to do. [CLAPPING]

DIMBLEBY
If for the purposes of argument you were - and clearly is it for the purposes of argument - you were within the Anglican communion would you find yourself wanting to engage in this debate however?

PORTILLO
Lord, I mean that's - I didn't mean to say Lord sorry - that is - that is ...

DIMBLEBY
It came naturally to your lips.

PORTILLO
That is asking me to make a pretty huge leap of imagination. I think it is a huge step for the church and I think there are matters of theology and there are matters of 2,000 years of history. It's a much easier decision for a state than it is for a church.

DIMBLEBY
Johann Hari.

HARI
Well as a gay man I think gay marriage has been a beautiful and wonderful moment. It's very rare you get to describe an act of government as beautiful but I think this has been. So you'd probably expect me to say that I think the church should give in and so on. I don't actually, I'm a atheist and I think the church - the people who are opposed to gay marriage - are reading the Bible accurately, the Bible quite clearly says you should not lie with another man, lie with a man as with a woman - it's wrong. Now I would urge people to ditch the Bible and to see the glorious darkness and become atheist. But ...

DIMBLEBY
Are you worried that if they did then have this debate and it turned out to favour your view that it would weaken your ability to achieve your victory over ....

HARI
But it's not that - look I've got gay Christian friends, I like gay Christians, obviously part of me hopes they prevail but I do think they're basically wrong. Their holy text is clearly anti-gay. And I think the solution is not to try to make the church nice and cuddly - I mean this is no disrespect to our hosts - but I think - we're in a church, I should point out to our listeners ...

KING
And can I just point out Johann, that you may actually be lynched quite soon.

HARI
But I ...

DIMBLEBY
Sebastian in the making.

HARI
Oona and I have been in many situations together where we've nearly been lynched, we were once in a car in Congo where a guy was being beaten to death in front of us so anything the Church of England can do to us is going to be fine.

So no obviously I think the Church of England has a right to take its position, I think the homophobes are reading their religious texts correctly, and I hope that nice liberal people will leave the Church of England and see the light or the darkness, as it were. [CLAPPING]

DIMBLEBY
I want to con - I want to consult our audience without prejudging anyway whether you belong to this church or another church or another faith or any faith at all, whether you in principle are with the implication of Gilbert Dowding's question, do you think it should follow the church society should even accept the idea of same sex marriages, civil partnerships - those who think you would like to see the church adopting support for these partnerships would you put your hands up those who do? Those who are against that? In this particular community in this church there is a resounding no for the proposition that was advanced that the church ...

HARI
But is it for the nice reasons I gave or the nasty reasons of not liking gays, that's the question?

DIMBLEBY
You may want to have your say on that, the number for Any Answers once more is 08700 100 444. And we'll go to our next question please.

PHOEBE
Derek Phoebe. Do the government's intended national databases in the NHS, the national ID scheme, the children's database and so on threaten privacy and liberty and are they solutions in search of problems?

DIMBLEBY
Richard Lambert.

LAMBERT
Well they - I think they threaten the public purse because the history of investing and building computer systems on this scale is one of T - total disaster. So one thing we could be certain of if it goes ahead on the scale that was originally envisaged - which I guess it's not going to do now - it would be chaos. I think that the notion of opting in or opting out is extremely important and that we should certainly insist at least on the ability of opt out, I would personally prefer to have the chance to opt in to these giant systems because you know - not only for questions of personal privacy also for questions of accuracy and there and then there are some really subtle ethical problems down the pathway if you don't go down there. I think we are in a society - I'm amazed always by how relaxed we are as a society for the numbers of different ways in which we're overseen by the state, you know there are TV cameras everywhere, we're tracked by - I can't remember how many it is - sort of 75 times a day, we walk down the road by - I mean most other countries don't - aren't comfortable with this kind of approach. In the US there's a big debate about whether CCTV cameras should be available. But anyway I think there are big privacy questions. I think we as a country actually - most countries are hopeless at giant systems that solve - some politician's decided is going to fix a problem. Very often, as you implied, the problem is something else altogether and so I'm suspicious and I'd rather that I was in control.

DIMBLEBY
If you are in control and you can opt out doesn't that vitiate the very purpose of having the database which is global in any case?

LAMBERT
Well I think that technology - roughly by the time it's completed these systems, if they're completed, technology will have moved on and I'll be able to carry around in my hand a little card which will have everything about me in it and if I get run over somebody will say ah there's his little card, here's his perfect medical record till now.

DIMBLEBY
Oona King.

KING
Well I think that it would actually be fabulous if you went to the doctors or you were referred to a different hospital and you didn't have to sit around for ages waiting for them to find your file, your paper file. I mean I think that would be a great thing. I think Richard's right, I mean it reminds me of that thing they say about technology - what does all technology have in common? It stops working. And you know technology's rubbish on that level, isn't it, it stops working. But if they could get a system to work whereby you did not have to have a paper trail and the doctor could pull up your notes, if you had decided to opt in to that system I would welcome it and I don't see it as a conspiracy, I see it as a step forward.

DIMBLEBY
Thank you. [CLAPPING] Michael Portillo.

PORTILLO
Yes I feel very threatened by it and Oona says the NHS is unable to handle our records today what makes you think that just by computerising them they're going to get any better at handling their records. [CLAPPING] What makes you think that an organisation that can't keep its hospitals clean is going to be capable of running computer systems? The throughput of staff in hospitals is enormous, the people come and work for a very short period of time will presumably temporarily be issued with the codes or whatever to get themselves into the system. Some people's records will be very, very valuable, I mean Jonathan, yours, you know ...

DIMBLEBY
Not to mention yours Mr Portillo.

PORTILLO
Dimbleby's records on ebay you know, I'm sure that would go for quite a lot. No ...

HARI
I'm bidding already.

PORTILLO
I think it is, I think it is very threatening, I think at the very least people should be able to opt out. And this idea that it's futuristic that you carry your own records with you is [indistinct word], it's perfectly possible to carry around one of these things you plug into the side of the computer with your own records and then you have the ability to carry your records with you so that the doctor may know whenever he or she sees you what your notes say. So put it in the hands of the patients not the hospitals. [CLAPPING]

DIMBLEBY
Johann Hari.

HARI
I don't get it and I don't understand why you all applauded Michael. There's clearly a very big concern about this and I tried really hard to understand it and I don't. Richard Lambert mentioned you're seen 77 times by CCTV. Well I've got news for you - you walk down the street and thousands of people see you, I genuinely - I don't understand it, France, Germany, Spain they all have all of these things, they're not tyrannies, they're not dictatorships, it seems bizarre to me. I share your concern certainly that governments are really bad at building computer systems and you've got to have in place checks and balances, you've got to make sure that the company will delivery on time, but at a time when there are real threats to civil liberties, really serious ones, a quarter of children in this country live in poverty, that is a threat to civil liberty. I think this nonsense about oh someone's going to be able to look at my medical records is genuinely bizarre. I also think the - one thing that is genuinely difficult that I think a lot of people who take a very negative view towards the state don't acknowledge is this is an instance of competing liberties.

If I can give just one quick example. Fewer than 1 in 10 rapists are ever caught in this country, that is a horrific violation of women's civil liberties. The DNA database, which was set up by the government and opposed by exactly the same people who are opposing this, has led to the capture of over 3,000 rapists. Now that is a competing liberty, it's a relatively small liberty to have your DNA stored on a database, it's a pretty big liberty to have taken from you to be raped. Now I think we've got to have a grown up conversation where we don't act as if Britain is tomorrow going to become a fascist police state and it's all going to go horribly wrong, where we actually acknowledge that there are some bargains that are worth making with liberty, there are some that aren't but they each have to be weighed on their own merits and not this weird paranoid the government's going to destroy you attitude.

LAMBERT
It's a bit of a leap isn't it, it's a bit of a leap.

DIMBLEBY
We're paranoid Richard Lambert?

LAMBERT
It's a bit of a leap to go from is the government capable, is the National Health Service capable of running a giant computer system to discussing our failure to nail rapists and to discuss paranoia - I think it's completely nutty.

KING
But don't you think....

LAMBERT
I think what we're saying here...

DIMBLEBY
Which is completely nutty? He's completely nutty?

LAMBERT
He's completely nutty. I mean what we're saying [CLAPPING]

DIMBLEBY
You think he's - you think he's completely nutty, he thinks Michael Portillo's completely nutty. Michael Portillo your go now.

PORTILLO
I believe that the death of privacy is one of the big issues of the 21st Century. You know how do you live in a society where you are observed all the time and where people can record your conversations, listen to what you do ... and I'm not just talking about the big brother state, we can actually do this to each other, I mean we could spend our lives recording each other and having little cameras in our lapels and so on and I think that is a big issue. If you have no private moments in your life I think it entirely changes ...

KING
But Michael it's Pandora's box, it's open isn't it.

PORTILLO
The Royal Family have already discovered this, the Royal Family no longer has any private moments, their mobile telephone calls are tape recorded and so on. And if it happened to the rest of us we would hate it.

HARI
Well that's a good argument [CLAPPING] but that ...

DIMBLEBY
Oona first.

KING
What it's not - I mean Johann was going to obviously say it was a good argument for something but what I'll tell you it's not a good argument for is why you shouldn't be able to access your health records at a different hospital, I mean we surely are not so antediluvian in this country that we can't even raise our sights to think that we're capable of organising that. Come on Britain.

DIMBLEBY
Let me then bring in our questioner, who caused this spirited debate, Dr Derek Phoebe, what's your own view?

PHOEBE
Well I think it would be good if government started doing its real job properly, instead of wasting billions of our money on this ill considered and hair brained schemes.

DIMBLEBY
Why [CLAPPING] you are - are you a medical doctor?

PHOEBE
Yes I am.

DIMBLEBY
And why would - Oona's making the point that she thinks it would be terrific from the patient's point of view, you obviously think it's hair brained - why?

PHOEBE
Well the big idea is that you go on holiday in Cornwall and drop a heavy iron ring on your big toe in Newlyn, then go back home to Newcastle and the doctor can call up your records over a network. There's a much simpler and cheaper solution which is you trust the patient and you give the records and x-rays to the patient to take home with them, and that doesn't cost you anything.

HARI
We're not going to carry our records everywhere we go are we?

DIMBLEBY
Johann says we're not going to carry our records wherever we go are we doctor?

PHOEBE
Well he's got a great and I think rather naive faith in the accuracy and success of networks of this nature to actually convey the information to where it's needed when it's wanted.

DIMBLEBY
As a doctor if for you it's a question of privacy and liberty, as well as a practical matter, what will you - if and when this scheme gets off the ground - what will you do, how will you deal with it in relation to your patients?

PHOEBE
Well I'm an academic these days and I don't see patients.

DIMBLEBY
How would you?

PHOEBE
I play with computers and that sort of thing and I have a great deal of faith in the ability of people operating computer systems to foul them up. [LAUGHTER]

DIMBLEBY
And there we will go on to our next question.

BRADFORD
Peter Bradford. What do panellists consider to be the biggest missed opportunity of 2006?

DIMBLEBY
Don't say it was one of the programmes you didn't do. Michael Portillo.

PORTILLO
Oh I knew you'd ask me first.

DIMBLEBY
Alright you're stumped for words.

PORTILLO
I am - well I think - I think I'd have to go back to something to do with the Middle East and Iraq, I'm not quite sure what the opportunity was in 2006 because it was already far down the road to horror by the beginning of the year. But if we think about why we're worried as we go into 2007, what is it that causes us the most concern, I think it continues to be the catastrophe in Iraq [CLAPPING] and the unresolved problems of Israel/Palestine. Alright, now I've finally groped my way towards an answer. There were mid-term elections which were only just over a month ago in the United States and there was the Iraq Study Group and it looked then as though the United States might in response - it looked as though Bush might engage on an all party bipartisan policy of trying to restart the process between Israel and Palestine. It's now very clear that that is not going to happen, so I'll put that down as a missed opportunity because although I do not simplistically believe that if you began to tackle Israel/Palestine all your other problems would go away, I don't believe that for a moment, I do believe that it is a really difficult flaw in the argument of the West to say that they want to deal with the questions of the Middle East, that they want to be in Iraq, that they want to sort out Afghanistan, and yet to keep saying that there is nothing for the West to do about Israel and Palestine, it must makes our argument implausible. And so without necessarily saying that there are great opportunities for success, at least in the short term, I would say that at least the West's policies would appear more coherent and they'd be more difficult to attack if the United States had re-engaged with Israel/Palestine. [CLAPPING]

DIMBLEBY
The biggest missed opportunity this year Oona King?

KING
Well I would agree with what Michael has just said about Palestine and the Middle East. If I can just turn domestically for a moment. The issue that I have thought is the biggest missed issue every year, actually, at budget time is housing, I know it's not fashionable to say so but there are many people in Britain that don't actually have a decent roof over their head, there are children brought up in homes where they do not have the heating they need, where they get asthma because there is damp running down the walls, we don't have enough good housing for every British person. And although this Labour government has increased by a vast amount - actually 600% - the amount of money we put into it it's not enough, at this time of Christmas I really think it's the least we could do - get a decent roof over every British person's head. [CLAPPING]

DIMBLEBY
Johann Hari.

HARI
Well I agree with both of those points, I've just returned from Gaza and the West Bank which are collapsing into a hellish situation, so I would very much endorse what Michael said. I'd actually name a place that's been literally a hundred times more deadly however than Israel/Palestine, I've been thinking about it a lot tonight with Oona because we went to the Democratic Republic of Congo, which has suffered the most deadly war since Adolf Hitler marched across Europe - four million people have died in the last six years. And this is not a war that is separate from the people in this room and the Christmas presents you're about to receive, it is about a war for the things that are placed under your Christmas tree. The United Nations described the invasion of Congo by six countries as an invasion by armies of business to seize metals like coaltan, which will be under your - in your mobile phone, in your remote control, in your Playstation, it was a war to seize those resources and sell them back to us. And they knew that we would buy them and not care that four million people were dying. Oona and I went to - I would like to really pay tribute to Oona who is one of the very few politicians who has done extraordinary work on what is happening in this place, most people didn't care. We went to a ward full of women who'd been gang raped and then shot in the vagina by these militias. We went to an orphanage that had a morgue attached because the kids die one or two a week and are sent of there. And it's actually something that we could deal with quite easily. The companies pillaging Congo are companies that are British, America, French, German - the missed opportunities that we have not spent this year bringing them to justice for profiting from war crimes.

DIMBLEBY
Thank you. [CLAPPING] Richard.

LAMBERT
Oh well the missed opportunity I'll mention and I'm afraid it's a bit of a nerdish one but it's a very, very serious one and it was a genuine missed opportunity and that was to take the World Trade talks forward and to - through the Doha development agenda and come up with a package which would have brought real opportunities to the developing world and would have helped to shape the developed world economies. We got so close to a deal and it was really in the end farmers in the United States and the agricultural lobby in the European Union who have failed to blink at the last minute and it was also India and Brazil who felt that they couldn't go along with what had been proposed. The deal was so close, it would have meant - it would have lifted - helped to have lift millions of people out of poverty in the developing world and we lost it and I think that's a real shame and it's a blow for politicians everywhere and I think we should lament it. [CLAPPING]

DIMBLEBY
If you've got your missed opportunity that you want to share - 08700 100 444 is the Any Answers number. We can just squeeze in one more.

HALES
Anna Hales. As yet politicians have not featured in Strictly Come Dancing, who does the panel think should appear on the next series, what would be their best dance and why?

DIMBLEBY
Which politician should appear in the next series, the best dance and why - and it has to be relatively swift I'm afraid. Johann, you'd like to start on this wouldn't you.

HARI
I think Michael Portillo and Amanda Platell and it should be one of those dances - I don't know if any of you have seen the film Matador by Pedro Almodovar where - it ends with these two serial killers and they butcher each other as they're dancing together until gradually they collapse on the floor in a pool of blood. I would pay to watch that. Good use of the licence fee.

DIMBLEBY
Richard Lambert.

LAMBERT
I think it should be Oona's best friend George Galloway and [LAUGHTER] and he should be doing the Cat dance.

DIMBLEBY
Oona.

KING
Well I turned down Strictly Come Dancing you see so that's why - that's why and yeah don't I regret it, I would have done better on that than I have here tonight I tell you. Probably Lembit Opik, I think he's a politician, dancing with the Cheeky Girls.

DIMBLEBY
Michael.

PORTILLO
I'd like to see Diane Abbott doing the limbo dance - you know where you go under a bar - and I would just melt watching it.

KING
That was outrageous.

DIMBLEBY
[CLAPPING] On that deeply touching, if not unimaginable note, we come to the end of this week's programme. Any Answers after the Saturday edition of Any Questions of course, it's also the end of Any Questions for this year, we'll be back next year. I could tell you who the panel's going to be but as you've got Christmas coming up and the New Year you're bound to forget, so I'm not going to bother. I'm just going to say to you listening I hope you've enjoyed our programmes this year, have a very happy Christmas and to everyone here in this church and to our panellists, thank you very much for having us and for being on the panel. For now from here in Castle Cary goodbye. [CLAPPING]

It’s tempting to see it as a late present found lingering under the tree. All together now: on the twelfth day of Christmas, my true love sent to me twelve Tory sleaze scandals, eleven Lords-a-leaping into seats they’ve bought, and a partridge in pear tree. This week, a red-suited, white-bearded Parliamentary Standards Commissioner (or did I imagine that attire?) announced that David Cameron, Michael Howard, George Osborne and a slew of senior Tories are being investigated for hawking the dining rooms of the Lords to the highest bidder. It turns out some Tories are offering a chance to dine in the Palace of Westminster with their senior MPs for a bung of £500 to the party.

But however alluring a long festive gloat might seem, it would be wrong. In the current British political system, we demand that our politicians hawk around for private cash. Until we change the system, we have no right to act shocked when they do what it demands. All political parties – no matter what their ideological flavour – are enmeshed in this soft corruption. Every single donor to the Labour party who has handed over more than a million pounds since 1997 has been ennobled, a fact that has brought Scotland Yard to the door of Downing Street. The Liberal Democrats have had to hand back £2m they received from a tycoon later revealed to be a crook. George Galloway’s RESPECT ‘Coalition’ received 30 percent of its 2005 election budget from a man who believes gay people should be executed. And on, and on.

It is not a question of individual moral failure on the part of our politicians. It is a question of hard cash. If we refuse to pay for our political campaigns, our politicians are forced to ask somebody else to do it.

The obvious problem vomited up by this is public cynicism. But it brings a deeper problem too. Slowly, subtly, this dependence on donations from the super-rich changes the laws you and I have to obey and the protections we enjoy. Let’s look at a concrete example. In 2005, the most recent year we have figures for, 220 workers and 361 members of the public were killed in the workplace. The Health and Safety Executive found that 70 percent of them were a direct result of managers knowingly gambling with human life to save cash. They were people like Simon Jones, a 24 year old who was sent to unload cargo on board a ship – one of the most dangerous jobs in the country – with just a few minutes “training”, and was crushed to death within two hours.

Corporate negligence is one of the biggest public safety issues in Britain, killing 407 people every year, eight times more than Islamic fundamentalist violence. But has any government dealt with this? Three successive Labour manifestoes pledged a Corporate Manslaughter Bill to stem the deaths, and three times it was batted away as “not a priority”. Finally, after eight years – and more than 3000 workplaces deaths caused by corner-cutting – the government has introduced a bill this year, but it is so full of holes campaigners warn it may be close to useless. The government is not responding to democratic pressure: a recent MORI poll found that 65 per cent of us believe workplace safety will only improve if company directors can be prosecuted for negligence, and want the law changed accordingly.

No – the government is responding to corporate pressure. Multimillionaire businessmen pay for their parties, so they get some say over what is played on the jukebox. It is nothing so crude as a bribe; it is simply that Tony Blair and the other party leaders internalise the “common sense” of their donors. As in the US, the super-rich acquire an unspoken veto power over the government of the country. You can see this in near-caricature form if you look at US politics. Why did the Bush administration, at a time of war, swelling deficits and the drowning of a major American city, decide to make tax cuts for multimillionaires a priority? Because American politics is paid for by the super-rich and works increasingly in their favour. “You got to dance with them what brung you”, as the Texan liberal Molly Ivins says.

But now – finally – a solution is approaching over the horizon, in the unlikely shape of Sir Hayden Phillips. He is the senior civil servant who has been tasked by Tony Blair to look at the question of state funding of political parties – and he is due to issue his final report in the next few weeks.

If he goes for the whole she-bang and calls for full state funding our of general taxation, this would be the moment when we could buy back our politicians from the rich and set them to work for us. In the US states that have introduced state funding in the past decade – Arizona and Maine – politics shifted quickly to the left as politicians no longer had to beg the rich for election funds. We could expect to see British politics quietly move closer to social democratic public opinion too.

Of course, the right-wing press has sniffed this and is already asking – why should you, the humble tax-payer, cough up for party politics? But you might as well ask why you should pay for the ballot papers or polling stations or the electricity in the House of Commons. Our democracy depends on parties. Helena Kennedy’s Power Inquiry – set up to tackle public cynicism about politics – pointed out that it would cost each tax-payer just 4p a week to establish an election fund, and each tax-payer could pick a political party to donate this tiny sum to. Isn’t that a price worth paying for proper democracy?

Yet if Sir Hayden does opt for state funding, he can expect to be besieged from both left and right. All sides will object that state funding never entirely eradicates corruption. Germany has it, and Helmut Kohl was still taking millions in brown envelopes in darkened car parks. But in countries that have state funding, corruption becomes a sometime-anomaly. In countries without it, corruption is a structural requirement.

Some old lefties like Diane Abbot and Tony Benn object to state funding because they fear it will remove the incentive to recruit members, and make parties even more centralized. The solution, they say, is to appeal to find tens of thousands more ordinary members, not replace them with the state. I share their worries – but all over the world, the mass political party is dead, part of a wider withering of collective organizations. We can spend a lifetime waiting for them to revive, and in the meantime the rich will have more control than ever.

The Tories are playing a more cynical tune, suggesting no state funding but instead a £50,000 cap on donations. This has one nakedly partisan purpose: it would strip Labour of its hefty trade union funding, while leaving the Tories with their broad base of rich donors only somewhat dented. This isn’t reasonable: either both parties should move away from their major funder-bases, or neither.

This makes the trade unions nervous too, but I think they’re missing an opportunity. At the moment they pay £8m a year to be treated - in John Monks’ famous phrase - “like embarrassing old aunts.” If that donation is picked up by the state, the unions will find themselves with a fat fund to influence the government in an more open way: through advertising campaigns that sway public opinion. It’s a healthier way to achieve the same goals.

This January, Sir Hayden Phillips has an opportunity to finally clear away the stink hanging over British politics. If he – and our politicians – don’t seize this moment, the latest Tory scandal will not be the last.

[This year, one of the Independent's Christmas Appeal charities is the Welfare Association, who work with Palestinians. I have been out in Gaza and the West Bank to see their work. This is the fourth despatch:]

Dr Haitham al-Hassan is smoking his tenth cigarette of our meeting and drinking the blackest of black coffee. “We are in a desperate position,” he says. “One day we can’t do catheterisation because we have run out of tubes. The next day we can’t do X-rays because we have run out of film. Some 60 percent of my budget has disappeared in the past year.” But Dr Hassan is not a doctor in the third world of the Occupied Territories. This is Jerusalem, currently part of first-world Israel. He is the director of the Moqassed Hospital, the largest medical centre for sick Palestinians, and he is struggling to stop his service falling apart.

We are walking briskly now through an empty General Surgery ward, the lights dulled, the beds fresh and waiting for patients who are stuck in agony outside. “This ward has been closed for a year. We can’t afford to keep it open,” he says, shaking his head. The majority of patients who make it to the Moqassed are Palestinians from the West Bank who need the specialist treatment they can only receive here. The Palestinian Authority (PA) usually pays for their care, but since the democratic election of Hamas earlier this year, the PA’s funds have been frozen by the outside world.

“We have lost half a million dollars a month,” Dr Hassan says. “But at the same time, our number of patients has massively increased because the boycott has brought the medical services on the West Bank to the brink of collapse. We have an increased burden and slashed resources – a disastrous combination. Although we are still functioning – it’s horrible to say this in a newspaper, but I have to – the quality of our care is deteriorating.”

As we walk into the next ward, we step over dozens of people sleeping in a corridor on the floor under thin blankets. They cannot go back and forth every day from their homes on the West Bank because of the Israeli checkpoints, so if they want to visit their sick relatives, they are stuck here. “This is a big problem for the hospital,” he says. “We have to bring them blankets and pillows at night. It’s hard to clean, it’s over-crowded. We are half-hospital, half-refugee camp.” The floor-sleepers are nervous, because the Israeli army periodically raids the hospital looking for people who are here without a permit.

At every step, there is evidence of a hospital stuttering to a halt. A nurse explains they have run out of sterilized gowns for the operating room. “We have to resterilize and resterilize the same gowns,” she says. “That means we have to wait two hours in between each operation while the gowns are sterilised. We are losing a huge amount of operating time.”

The consequences of military occupation lie bleeding in every ward. In intensive care, we find a patient who was mangled in a car crash. He has five fractures, an open wound with a torn artery, and extensive internal bleeding. His accident happened just twenty minutes’ away on the West Bank – but he was detained at the Israeli checkpoints for three hours. “This means his kidney has been damaged, his lung was seriously damaged,” Dr Hassan says, reading through the medical notes. The patient had to be transferred to a new ambulance at the checkpoint, “which is why he has dead muscles. This man will be disabled all his life because he had to wait so long for treatment.”

It is, the doctor adds, “an everyday occurrence” here for patients to be seriously injured or die because they have been held at checkpoints. “With an urgent case, especially when a person is bleeding, a half-hour delay can kill. So imagine what a three hour delay or more, which is very common, is doing.” He believes this is a deliberate strategy by the Israeli government. “Clearly, one of the aims of the Israeli occupation is to isolate the Palestinians from Jerusalem and force them to open medical centres on the West Bank,” he says. “It’s part of a very slow, very long-term policy to discourage Palestinians from coming to Jerusalem.”

For three months this year, the staff at the Moqassed Hospital went without any pay. In October, Dr Hassan took out a huge bank loan – at commercial rates of interest – because many of his staff were so impoverished they couldn’t afford to bus fare to work any more. But he is stuck in a cruel spiral where as his funds dry up, his costs expand. “We cannot afford to buy drugs in bulk any more,” he says, “so we have to buy piece by piece, which is 30 percent more expensive.”

He explains this as we enter the neo-natal unit, the only place where Palestinian babies weighing less than 600 grams can be treated. A tiny little person who could fit into my hand is silently kicking the air from her incubator. “Is she a terrorist?” Dr Hassan asks under his breath. This ward has only been able to stay open, he explains, because the hospital is receiving financial support from the Belgian government, the Islamic Fund in Morocco – and the Welfare Association, one of the Independent’s Christmas charities. We wander around for a silent five minutes, looking at unimaginably small people who are being kept alive in incubators bought by them.

“The Welfare Association has rescued us,” Dr Hassan says as he watches a mini-baby scheduled for cardiac surgery the next day. “They oversaw a project that improved the administrative capacity of the six Palestinian hospitals here in East Jerusalem, which means we have saved a fortune we can now use on patients.” They have bought equipment that is keeping people alive all over the hospital. They pay for the doctors here to receive specialist training. “But yes, we need more help,” the doctor says. “We are victims of terrorism. This occupation is a form of terrorism.” For every Palestinian who resists this occupation by blowing up innocent Israelis, there are hundreds like Dr Hassan who resist it by saving innocent life. It is these, the courageous Palestinians who fight every day in defence of life, who need your help today.

POSTSCRIPT: To donate to help this doctor and others like him, go to http://www.justgiving.com/process/whitelabel/?_WhiteLabelId=1214

There is a fanatical pressure group in the US called 'Honest Reorting' who believe they are pro-Israeli. In fact, they are advocate a course of action - endless occupation of Palestinian lands, and military aggression - that is profoundly endangering Israel's existence in the long-term.

They have printed an astonishingly dishonest reaction to my recent Bethlehem article. You can read it at:

http://www.honestreporting.com/articles/45884734/critiques/Bethlehem_-_Abusing_the_Christmas_Story.asp

You can read a factual rebuttal of them at:

http://dishonestreporting.blogspot.com/2006/12/dec-25-media-critique-bethlehem-abusing.html

Worse, a supposedly reputable newspaper, the Jerusalem Post, printed an equally egregious misrepresentation of the article I wrote about how Israel's rejection of democratically elected Palestinian governments as "too extreme" simply produces movements that are more extreme still.

Caroline Glick, in her Post column (unfortnately not on line), summarises my view as follows:

"[Writers like this] assume that Palestinian society will never be anything but a jihadist society."

This is simply a flat-out lie. In the article, I say precisely the opposite:

"There is still – still – a majority in Palestine for peaceful coexistence with Israel, with 67 percent supporting the Hamas proposal for a 40-year hudna." I stress repeatedly that a clear majority of Palestinians oppose jihadism and Talibanism.

Glick continues:

"Although Hari clearly shares this defeatist view he inadvertently demonstrated that it is wrong and counterproductive. Hari quoted 29-year-old Basa Abu-Jased whose Internet cafe in Gaza's Jabalya refugee camp was firebombed by jihadists. Abu-Jased expressed his despair and frustration at the emerging Islamist state in Gaza saying 'Of course women are frightened now. Even as a man I am really frightened! I used to sit on the street and talk to women. Now I won't do it. You don't know what's going to happen.'

What Abu-Jased and his friends need most desperately is for someone to offer them the opportunity to support something other than competing terrorist organizations."

As Glick must know if she has even basic reading comprehension skills, the point I was making was precisely that Abu-Jased and the people of Gaza desperately need an alternative to growing fundamentalism - and every single Gazan liberal I met (literally every single one) agreed that the best way to choke off fundamentalism was to end the Israeli occupation. (If you think the occupation of Gaza has ended, you should check out the new report by B'tselem showing that deaths have trebled there in the past year). They all believed that the savagery of the occupation was radicalising a minority of the population, making them think constantly about death and making the arguments of the most deranged groups seem more appealing.

For Glick to use the words of these people to argue for more and longer Israeli occupation - as she does - is one of the most repellent pieces of journalistic misrepresentation I have ever read.

Oh, and another example of outright lies from supposedly pro-Israel groups, this time by Joseph Farrah, can be read at http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=53560

He summarizes my Bethlehem story (which has been authenticated by the United Nations and Israeli human rights group B'tselem) by saying it is about "an Arab woman who claims she was stopped from entering Israel to deliver her twins and forced to go 20 minutes in another direction to an Arab hospital."

This can only be deliberate deception. Look back at my story. Fadia Jemal was +not+ trying to get to an Israeli hospital; she was trying to get to a Palestinian hospital in Bethlehem, from her home very nearby. She was +not+ 'stopped from entering Israel'; she was stopped from going to one part of the West Bank to another. (At no point did she even consider entering Israel; she would not have been allowed in without prior and elaborate permission, as anybody who knows anything about life in the Occupied Territories knows).

She was +not+ 'forced to go 20 minutes in another direction to an Arab hospital'. She was held for hours at a checkpoint that was preventing her from leaving her village and going to any hospital at all. This caused her baby to die.

Farrah's summary is a tissue of lies, from beginning to end. And he accuses me of writing "the worst form of propaganda"!

The wall of distortion you confront when trying to honestly describe life in the Occupied Territories shouldn't shock me, I suppose. But I didn't expect the lies to be quite so blatant.