Gaza Healthcare System Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office
Lorraine Beavers
Main Page: Lorraine Beavers (Labour - Blackpool North and Fleetwood)Department Debates - View all Lorraine Beavers's debates with the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office
Gaza Healthcare System
Lorraine Beavers Excerpts(1 day, 9 hours ago)
Westminster HallRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Lorraine Beavers (Blackpool North and Fleetwood) (Lab)
Thank you, Sir Jeremy. It is an honour to serve under your chairship.
Today’s debate concerns healthcare in Gaza, but the truth is this: there is almost no healthcare left. Hospitals have been bombed. Doctors and nurses have been killed. Children are having limbs amputated without proper pain relief. Babies are being born in tents, into hunger and into fear. There is not a functioning healthcare system; it has collapsed, and it is children who are paying the highest price. Thousands of children have been killed. Many more have been injured. Gaza now has an entire generation of children living with life-changing disabilities. Imagine being a child who survives a bomb, loses a leg and then cannot get a wheelchair or even basic medicine. Imagine being a parent who knows that their child needs treatment, but cannot get them out.
A Palestinian child died on Sunday. Nidal had been granted medical referral documents 14 months ago, but he died waiting for Israel to grant him permission to leave Gaza. More children will die waiting if we do not fight. Children are sleeping on the bare ground in the cold. They are drinking dirty water. They are dying from illnesses that we know how to treat. Almost every child is now carrying deep psychological trauma from what they have seen and lost.
The view of many experts is that we are witnessing a genocide. We have a moral duty to do everything in our power to put an end to this horror, because it is not inevitable, but aid is being blocked. Israel has revoked the licences of 37 international NGOs. That is outrageous. Without doubt, it will add to the suffering, the trauma and the deaths of more Palestinian children. Medical supplies are still not getting in at the scale needed. Humanitarian organisations are still being prevented from doing their work.
This country cannot fix everything, but we are not powerless. We are not doing enough. We must push for crossings to be fully opened, so that medicine, fuel and food can get in. We must fund medical equipment, rehabilitation and mental healthcare for children whose lives have been shattered. We must stand up for humanitarian agencies so that they can operate freely and safely. We must make it clear that hospitals and healthcare workers must never be the targets.
This debate is not about politics. It is about whether a child who survives a bomb is then allowed to live. Right now, too many children are not. We owe them more than our sympathy. We owe them action.
Sir Jeremy Wright (in the Chair)
I thank the hon. Lady very much for her co-operation and self-restraint; I extend the same thanks to all colleagues who have spoken. We will now move on to the Front-Bench speeches, beginning with the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.