Ceasefire in Gaza

Debate between Julian Lewis and Brendan O'Hara

Wednesday 21st February 2024 Commons Chamber

[Brendan O’Hara]

I think the very first sentence that I said was that we utterly condemn the Hamas attack and we implore them to release the hostages, but there has to be a pathway to reaching that.

When the shadow Foreign Secretary said that the vote today would not bring about a ceasefire, he was right, but to try to downplay the importance of the motion does not serve him well. I suspect that, as these moments do not come around very often, he understands only too well the importance of tonight’s vote. It is moments like these that shape the ethical identity of a country. It is the decisions that we take now that will reverberate down the decades, and they will define who we are and what we stand for. That is why we are calling so clearly and unambiguously for an immediate ceasefire. Anything else pre-supposes that there can be a military solution to this conflict. Any other form of words threatens to give credence to the idea that Israel’s deploying its massive military capacity in Gaza will somehow be enough to destroy Hamas. In reality, as everyone knows and as history tells us, the only possible solution to this crisis is a political solution.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

I could understand the hon. Gentleman’s argument better if he were talking about what the Americans seem to call a temporary ceasefire to see whether more hostages could be released, but he appears to be calling for an unconditional ceasefire—I see people nodding—which would leave all the hostages at the mercy of Hamas. Does that not put Israel in the position where previously it has had to release 1,000 people who had been criminally convicted in order to get one soldier back? Indeed, one of the people Israel released was the person who organised the Hamas atrocities on 7 October.

[Brendan O’Hara]

I thank the right hon. Member for that intervention. I am absolutely clear that there has to be a roadway—a path—towards peace, and that has to start with an immediate ceasefire. If it does not, there is no pathway. I will address directly the issue of humanitarian pauses in a moment.

When the SNP last called for a vote on the ceasefire on 15 November, the death toll in Gaza stood at 11,320—already a heartbreaking number of people killed. Just yesterday, John Hopkins University and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine released their analysis, which showed that if this conflict continues on the same trajectory there will be between 58,000 and 75,000 additional civilian Palestinian deaths in the next six months, so we know categorically what the consequences of inaction will be. No one can claim in the future that they did not know, or that they did not understand the consequences of what they were doing tonight.

Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Bill

Debate between Julian Lewis and Brendan O'Hara

Consideration of Lords amendments
Monday 14th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Brendan O'Hara (Argyll and Bute) (SNP)]

I rise to speak in favour of the Lords amendment, which would require any Government seeking to dissolve this House early and call a general election to first seek and receive the support of a simple majority of the Members of this House.

Last year, when the Bill was first introduced by the Government, it was presented as a non-controversial resetting of a mistake that David Cameron made in his attempts to form a coalition with the Liberal Democrats. We were told that Cameron had made a bit of a mess of things, that this Bill would simply take us back to exactly where we were prior to 2010, and that we could almost pretend that it never really happened. However, as we have heard in this place and in the Lords, that is not the case. The Bill is not about reinstating what was in place prior to the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011, but rather creates a situation whereby the Executive have even greater powers and the monarch, who hitherto had prerogative powers, merely enacts the Executive’s will to dissolve Parliament.

This Lords amendment seeks to place a very minimal check on the Executive’s power by making any Dissolution of Parliament a decision that has to have the support of the majority of this House. I do not think that our constituents would think that it is too much to ask for those who have been elected to this place, and who serve their constituents in this place, to have some say if a Parliament is to be dissolved early and a general election called.

[Dr Julian Lewis]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way, which is typically gracious of him. He calls it a “minimal check,” but the reality is that it is an absolute veto. If a Government do not have a majority in the House and if the Opposition sense that a Government might well win a majority if they went to the people, the Opposition are basically saying, “We are not going to allow the Government to get a mandate from the people.” That is precisely what would have happened in 2019 if Labour had not, for some reason, given way in the end.

[Brendan O'Hara]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that intervention, but that is a decision for this Parliament to take. We are elected to take decisions, and to abdicate that responsibility to the Executive is a dangerous route to go down; we should not do that. He says that it is the people, but we in this Parliament are the voice of the people, and there has to be a check on the powers of the Executive.

Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Bill

Debate between Julian Lewis and Brendan O'Hara

2nd reading
Tuesday 6th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Brendan O’Hara]

The Scottish Government will stand by and have stood by their record, and have been accountable on the day of the Scottish elections for every Parliament. The Scottish Parliament knows when the next election will be, and every Government will be accountable on that day. If those in the Chamber want to look at the success of the Scottish Government—the SNP Scottish Government—as put forward and verified by the Scottish public just two months ago, let me say that I am sure there is not a Member of this House, particularly on the Liberal Democrat Benches, who would not give their eye teeth for such an endorsement. However, I will move on, Madam Deputy Speaker, because I can see that I am testing your patience somewhat.

[Dr Julian Lewis]

rose—

[Brendan O’Hara]

I will come to the right hon. Gentleman in a moment, but I will take your advice, Madam Deputy Speaker, and move on.

Clause 3 of the Bill is an ouster clause. It aims in effect to put the Government’s action beyond the reach of the law, meaning that decisions made by the Government on these matters are non-justiciable. This is clearly the action of a Government who are still smarting from the humiliation of the Supreme Court’s Prorogation judgment in 2019, which said that it was not in the power of the Prime Minister to suspend Parliament for such a long time at such a critical moment.

In January, Baroness Hale and Lord Sumption gave evidence to the Joint Committee on the Fixed-term Parliaments Act, and they both expressed serious reservations about clause 3 of this Bill, which renders non-justiciable the powers given to the Government in clause 2. Those non-justiciable powers include controlling the space of time between the Dissolution of one Parliament and the general election and between the general election and the first sitting of a new Parliament. All of that would be in the control of a Government whose previous attempts to undermine parliamentary democracy through proroguing in 2019 were, as we have seen, deemed unlawful. The difference this time is that they hope that the Supreme Court could not intervene. Back in January, both Lord Sumption and Baroness Hale were unequivocal in saying that the minimum safeguard that this Bill needed in the event of such an ouster clause was to put a time limit on the moving of writs for parliamentary elections, which has not been done.