Gaza: Ceasefire

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Tuesday 18th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Pannick (CB)]

My Lords—

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Captain of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen-at-Arms and Chief Whip (Lord Kennedy of Southwark) (Lab Co-op)]

We will hear from the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, next and then from my noble friend Lord Grocott.

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

As I have repeatedly said to the noble Lord in this Chamber, we are committed to building a future where the Palestinian Authority is the authority for all Occupied Territories and it is defended and protected to do its job. There is no role for Hamas in the future of Gaza.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords, is not the overwhelming natural reaction to the news that we have heard today to ask: how much longer must this slaughter continue? Let us add the 400 deaths reported so far to the 48,000 that have already taken place—including 11,000 children and several hundred children under the age of 12 months, who presumably were not members of Hamas. If this does not include serious breaches of international humanitarian law, then it is time that someone started rewriting the humanitarian law law book.

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

I think my noble friend knows that we have considered the risk of breach of humanitarian law and have taken action to mitigate that risk. I also want to stress how we have worked with allies. On 5 March, together with France and Germany, we expressed our deep concern at Israel’s halt on aid to Gaza and urged it to lift restrictions. The Foreign Secretary also made this clear to the Israeli Foreign Minister during their call on 5 March. On 28 January, the then Minister for Development announced a further £17 million of healthcare aid. The situation is no doubt dire. We cannot see the return to the violence we have seen before. We want this ceasefire to hold. We want to see the return of hostages and we are doing everything we can with our allies to ensure that that is the case.