Tom Pursglove
Main Page: Tom Pursglove (Conservative - Corby)Department Debates - View all Tom Pursglove's debates with the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office
(8 years ago)
Commons ChamberUrgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
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If we are to move forward we need to work together. We need to take the British nation with us, and we need to work as a Parliament. I hear what the hon. Lady says. We need to make sure that we debate these matters more regularly so that people are prepared to recognise the danger in which we may be putting our service personnel, as well as the options available for us to lean further forward and get the result that we want.
The Minister has been candid in his reflections on the vote in the House in August 2013. What direct impact has that parliamentary vote had on policy thinking? If one of our planes is shot out of the sky, we have to be prepared to retaliate.
Without revisiting the question too much, I believe that collectively our inability to secure that vote before Russia moved into this sphere, before we even knew what the word “Daesh” meant, was a missed opportunity to hold Assad to account. For different reasons, we blinked, and Government need to learn what more we can do collectively to work together to make sure that we do not repeat that mistake.