Mr David Lammy

I am grateful to the right hon. Lady, and let me make clear regarding the charity worker who was injured, that of course our ambassador and the Foreign Office are in touch with his family. As she would expect, we have made representations to the Israeli Government, and I will be speaking to the Israeli Foreign Minister in the coming hours. The right hon. Lady talks about Hamas, and I have said at this Dispatch Box that the scenes of those young men in balaclavas with Kalashnikovs parading hostages are obscene, and I condemn them. I said in January that we would continue to stand with the hostage families, and we will. There are still dozens of families waiting, hoping, praying that their loved ones can return, but the right hon. Lady will also have seen overnight that many of those families are saying that this is not the way to bring them home. They fear that as a consequence of this resumed action, their loved ones will perish, and I thought that the tone of some of her remarks did not sit with what I see coming out of Israel at this time. No one could not be absolutely touched and affected by the gaunt and malnourished hostages paraded around in a sick propaganda exercise. We all condemn Hamas. The right hon. Lady asks what we are doing. What we are doing, and what the previous Government did, is supporting the Palestinian Authority with reform. There has to be an alternative to Hamas, and that alternative is the Palestinian Authority. We must work with it; we have to give people hope and prospect that is not about terrorism, and that is about supporting Prime minister Mustafa in all his efforts. That is what we have been doing, and why we have been working particularly with the Arab Quint. She asked about how we are working with partners in the area, and there was to be a conference, a gathering, in Egypt this weekend. It has been postponed, but it will be important that we attend that gathering, and work with our Arab partners. I put on record our support for Egypt and Qatar in their conversations with Hamas. She knows that we do not talk to Hamas, but we do work with those partners who can. The right hon. Lady asked about future operations in the Red sea, and she knows well that I would never comment from the Dispatch Box on operational issues in the Red sea. She asked me if there is any moral equivalence between Hamas and the Israeli Government. Of course there is no moral equivalence between Hamas and the Israeli Government, and none of us has ever suggested that that is the case. She asked, rightly, about the role of Iran. She is right about the malign affect of Iran in the region, and we will act to ensure that it does not get the nuclear capability that it is seeking to secure —I discussed that issue with Secretary of State Rubio and my counterparts in France and Germany.