Mr David Lammy

I am grateful to the shadow Foreign Secretary for the tone of his response. He will know as well as anyone that these are complex and sober questions, and it is right that the House can debate them in the appropriate tone and spirit this afternoon. I recall that Lord Cameron said that he was concerned that Israel had violated international humanitarian law. The shadow Foreign Secretary himself has repeatedly called on Israel to abide by international humanitarian law and said that in certain actions it may not have complied with international humanitarian law. In April, the shadow Minister—the hon. Member for Rutland and Stamford (Alicia Kearns), who was in her seat slightly earlier—said that the UK had no choice but to suspend arms, so the shadow Foreign Secretary can recognise that this is not a partisan issue. I am very grateful for the tone that he has taken in this debate. I have provided the House today with a summary of the way in which I have made the assessment. In doing so, I have been more transparent than any Government have been in the past about such decisions, because I recognise the exceptional public interest that there is in this debate. The shadow Foreign Secretary is right, like me, to underline that there is no moral equivalence between Hamas, who began this atrocity on 7 October, and Israel’s prosecution of getting the hostages out and defending itself, even though I have said that there is a clear risk in relation to our export licensing regime. He is right to talk about the context in Lebanon and indeed to support the Government’s message that UK nationals should leave. Let me assure him that I have not just visited Lebanon, now and on many occasions, but spoken with the Lebanese Prime Minister on three occasions just in the last few weeks. In the west bank, of course we recognise the important security concerns of Israel, but we are deeply concerned with the way that we have seen these actions being prosecuted over the last few days, and we call for de-escalation. On the situation in Gaza, successive Foreign Secretaries have now raised with the Israelis—I raised it directly with Prime Minister Netanyahu—that not enough trucks are getting in. It is still the case today, after 11 months of conflict, that not enough trucks are getting in. The Minister for Development was assessing the situation from Jordan, as I was, just before that, with the Red Crescent. It has been important for us to demonstrate leadership in the UN and to press for pauses so that the children of Gaza can be vaccinated against polio. We have that pause in place, I think between 8 am and 2 pm, so that those children can get the vaccinations they need so that they do not suffer.