Middle East

Andy McDonald Excerpts

Monday 21st July 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Roger Gale)]

Order. Once again, a very large number of hon. Members wish to take part in this discussion. The intention is to try to accommodate everybody, but that will mean Members exercising a degree of self-restraint that was not entirely evident during the previous statement. I leave it to you, but if you want everybody to be called, then please, we need questions, not statements. If I may say so, Foreign Secretary, we also need relatively brief answers.

[Andy McDonald (Middlesbrough and Thornaby East) (Lab)]

The statement we have from the 25 or 31 partners takes us no further forward. It says:

“We are prepared to take further action to support an immediate ceasefire”.

People want action, not more repetition of, “We call for”, “We demand” and “We urge”. We want action, and this is not action. We have had this so many times before. We have this terrible humanitarian crisis, the forcible transfer of civilians, and starvation by Israel. How can it be that we have a situation in which the IDF are firing at children and systematically going for the head, stomach and testicles for their sport, and in which Rafah has been razed to the ground and this euphemistic “humanitarian city” is being constructed, which the former Prime Minister of Israel has called a “concentration camp”? When are we going to take the appropriate action to bring about a comprehensive trade and arms embargo and concentrate the mind of Israel? Nothing else is working. They are not listening, and they are getting away with murder every single day.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Roger Gale)]

The hon. Gentleman clearly did not listen to a word that I said, but I am sure that the Foreign Secretary did.