Gaza Healthcare System

Debate between Jeremy Wright and Andy McDonald

Tuesday 24th February 2026 Westminster Hall

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

It is a privilege to serve under your chairship, Sir Jeremy. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Dr Opher) on securing this debate and on his expertise in the area.

The Israeli Government carry out these crimes against humanity because they can, and no one stops them. For nearly two years, Gaza’s healthcare system has been systematically dismantled during Israel’s military campaign. The World Health Organisation reports that there were 735 attacks on healthcare in Gaza from 7 October 2023 to 11 June last year. In 2024, the UN commission of inquiry concluded:

“Israel has implemented a concerted policy to destroy the health-care system of Gaza.”

The special rapporteur Francesca Albanese has stated that the targeted destruction of Gaza’s healthcare system by the IDF amounts to “medicide”, part of

“the intentional creation of conditions calculated to destroy Palestinians in Gaza which constitutes an act of genocide.”

One image stays with me: a hospital tent, a patient on a drip, flames climbing the IV line, a man too sick to run. That is what the destruction of a health system looks like. Amid this horror, there have been many extraordinary acts of courage from very many British medics, including Middlesbrough doctor Mohammed Mustafa and Professor Ghassan Abu-Sittah. They have stitched, they have amputated, they have delivered babies and they have kept children alive in wards without power and under bombardment.

Even under the so-called ceasefire, Israel restricts healthcare. Dual-use restrictions block medical equipment, including imaging machines, prosthetic materials and surveillance tablets. More than 6,000 amputees await limbs. Only a few hundred prostheses have been allowed in. Stocks will run out. Israel has moved to deregister more than 35 international NGOs, including those funded by the British public. Those organisations deliver one in three births in Gaza and hundreds of thousands of consultations. They are being forced to hand over staff data or be shut down. Medical evacuations remain desperately limited. The WHO lists 18,000 people as in urgent need of care outside Gaza.

The deliberate targeting of healthcare, the obstruction of aid and the killing and detention of medical personnel raise serious questions under international humanitarian law and the Geneva convention. A ceasefire must mean a ceasefire. Israel must uphold the ceasefire, lift its blockade on medical aid, end registration rules, allow safe passage for patients, permit the reconstruction of hospitals and release detained healthcare workers. The UK Government must do more than issue statements. They must interrogate Israel’s actions and intent, and enforce consequences. We are seeing scenes where the dogs are healthy in Gaza and the people are starving. We must ask ourselves how it is that the dogs are so healthy. Where are they getting their nutrition? I will leave people to make up their own mind.

I ask the Minister these questions. Have the Government assessed whether UK-supplied arms, including F-35s, were used in strikes on healthcare facilities? Will they publish their assessment? Will he state without equivocation that the destruction of hospitals in Gaza is a breach of international humanitarian law and is in direct contravention of the genocide convention? What diplomatic or economic sanctions has the UK imposed in response to Israel blocking 18,000 patients? What consequences will Israel face for deregistering aid agencies? How is the UK implicated through the Civil-Military Co-ordination Centre?

Given that the UK sanctioned over 1,500 individuals after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the glaring double standards are beyond reprehensible. The UK’s diplomatic statements have not shifted the Israeli Government’s policy one iota. We must use leverage, trade measures, arms controls and sanctions—concrete consequences for grave breaches of international law. Healthcare is protected in war. That is not optional; it is the law.

The UK has not done anywhere near enough to exert pressure on Israel. If the same ineffective stance is maintained, the UK risks facing charges of complicity. We have more than diplomacy in our locker. It is absolutely criminal that the UK is not using the levers available. We have legal, moral and historical obligations and responsibilities to the Palestinians, who this country has betrayed for over 100 years, from the Balfour declaration to the present day, and the genocide continues. In the name of God, I ask the Minister—I urge him and this Government—to do the right thing and act, before the Palestinian people are completely wiped from the map.

[Sir Jeremy Wright (in the Chair)]

I can give the hon. Member for Blackpool North and Fleetwood (Lorraine Beavers) three minutes to speak.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jeremy Wright and Andy McDonald

Tuesday 1st July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Wright]

I do understand that, and of course it is important that we stand behind the principle of open prisons assisting in the rehabilitation of prisoners and making it less risky for the public when they are finally released, but my hon. Friend is right that only the right people should be in open prisons. We are tightening up the rules on how people move through the system into open prisons. We are sending the clearest possible message that prisoners who abscond from their sentence and abuse the trust they were given in an open prison will not get a second chance.

[Andy McDonald (Middlesbrough) (Lab)]

10. If he will take steps to ensure that mesothelioma victims do not have to pay legal costs from their damages. When the Government’s no win, no fee reforms apply to mesothelioma claims, it will be up to claimants’ lawyers whether they wish to charge their clients a success fee. There is no requirement for them to do so.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jeremy Wright and Andy McDonald

Tuesday 6th May 2014 Commons Chamber

[Andy McDonald (Middlesbrough) (Lab)]

T6. How many books, to the nearest thousand, sent to prisoners in 2013 were intercepted and found to include contraband?

[Jeremy Wright]

The hon. Gentleman will not be shocked to learn that I do not have that figure in front of me. As I said to his hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Tom Blenkinsop), the Opposition need to think carefully about what they are really worried about. If they are worried about prisoners having access to books, I have reassured them that they do not need to worry about that. If, however, they are worried, as the shadow Secretary of State told us he was, about the influx of drugs and other contraband substances into prisons, they might want to reflect on the sense of restricting packages as they come into prisons. That is what we are proposing to do. What are they going to do?

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jeremy Wright and Andy McDonald

Tuesday 12th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Wright]

I can assure the hon. Gentleman that there is no complacency whatsoever. It is exceptionally important that prisoners learn literacy and numeracy skills, which many of them lack. It is also important that they develop vocational qualifications, because we know that gaining those qualifications leads on to higher chances of employment, and maintaining a job is the best way we know of keeping someone away from crime. That is hugely important.

The hon. Gentleman will also be reassured to know that we are looking carefully at how we can improve education within the youth estate. As a former Chairman of the Education Committee he will recognise the importance of our duty to educate those young people properly, and when the contracts come up for renewal next year, we will expect better.

[Andy McDonald (Middlesbrough) (Lab)]

How does the Minister reconcile the competing demands of tier 1 providers in reducing reoffending and disseminating good information with the retention of data on intellectual property? How will he reconcile those two competing issues?

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jeremy Wright and Andy McDonald

Tuesday 19th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Andy McDonald (Middlesbrough) (Lab)]

Does the Minister agree that, given the incidence of special educational needs in our custodial system and the incidence of acquired brain injury there, a lot of young people who are in custody should not be there? Does he agree that there ought to be earlier intervention at an earlier screening, long before they get into custody?

[Jeremy Wright]

I agree substantially with what the hon. Gentleman has said, and we need to work harder, together with our colleagues in the Department of Health and elsewhere, to ensure that such young people are diverted away from the criminal justice system earlier. However, it is also right to say that we have a responsibility to ensure that provision is appropriate for those young people who do need to be in custody, and that a large proportion of those, as he says, have special educational needs and other issues.