Brian Leishman

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Stringer. My thanks go to my hon. Friend the Member for Hyndburn (Sarah Smith) for securing this debate. For me, the most depressing and terrifying departmental questions that we have in this place are Defence questions. We had a session on Monday this week, and it was no exception. There always seem to be questions from nearly every corner of the Chamber about increasing military spending: about more money for more bombs and more weapons—“Let’s make Britain a defensive industrial powerhouse.” Respectfully, if anyone thinks that the route to improving living standards for millions of people in this country is making drones, weapons and the like, I am confident that they are wrong. When we watch the news and see what is happening in Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan, Syria and other places across the globe, do we think that what the world needs right now is more killing, more death and more weapons? I do not. I categorically think that we need less. When I watch the news and see children in warzones, sitting in rubble, traumatised, starving and orphaned—the victims of the horrors of war—I feel overwhelming sadness. But should we not also think about the weapons that have been used to create this appalling humanitarian situation? In Gaza specifically, we have seen parents carry the bodies of dead children. Doctors have come to Westminster to tell MPs about tending to children who have been shot in the head by Israeli drones. Millions of people have taken to the streets all across Britain to protest at the deaths of innocent civilians. Save the Children—not a fringe organisation—says that more than 20,000 children have been murdered. On average, one Palestinian child has been killed every hour by Israeli forces over nearly 23 months of war. More than 1,000 children killed were under the age of one, while at least 42,000 children have been injured and 21,000 have been left permanently disabled. During so many urgent questions and statements in the main Chamber, Foreign Secretaries have said that arms sales are a complicated issue, but thousands of children being massacred is not complicated.