Middle East Update

Stephen Flynn Excerpts

Tuesday 6th May 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mr Falconer]

My hon. Friend rightly highlights the importance of the humanitarian principles she outlines. Those are important principles not just in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, but right across the world. It is a proud part of British history that we have been such forceful advocates for those principles, and we will continue to be so with Israel and any others who seek to undermine them.

[Stephen Flynn (Aberdeen South) (SNP)]

The hon. Member will forgive me, but there are few things more infuriating in this House than listening to Ministers—whether they are of the blue persuasion, or of the red persuasion, as now—fail to call out collective punishment for what it is, fail to call out war crimes for what they are, continue to justify the sale of arms to Israel, and find every excuse possible not to recognise the state of Palestine. Perhaps he will be the one who surprises me, gets to his feet, and says that the plan as laid out by Benjamin Netanyahu is tantamount to ethnic cleansing. Will he do that, yes or no?

[Mr Falconer]

The right hon. Gentleman, perhaps unsurprisingly, goes for rhetoric, and he wants me to opine on questions of law and make determinations that Ministers, for a long time, have rightly chosen to treat as questions for the courts. He asked me to take action. As a Government, the Labour party has taken action. It has taken action on arms, and on sanctions—we have a record that we can defend; we are not simply here for rhetoric.