Ms Stella Creasy
MP for Walthamstow · Labour (Co-op) · United Kingdom
“I thank the Foreign Secretary for his clear-sighted commitment not only to talk about a two-state solution, but to actually try to act to achieve it, as the only foundation of a safe Israel and a free Palestine.”
“Could he reassure the House that we will not acquiesce and bend to such pressure, and that the only action that could ever be acceptable to us to make us contemplate reversing this ban would be a halt on the E1 development and a permanent end to settler violence?”
“I start by paying tribute to the new Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall and Camberwell Green (Florence Eshalomi), for all the work she did on the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee on these issues. I know that she will do a brilliant job in this role.”
“I do not really understand the technology, but I know that he does, and I understand and share his fear accordingly. We come here today to debate this Bill because we all know that trust is a bygone issue in our politics.”
“We would welcome her having that conversation, which might be more illuminating than whether she is concerned about Zach Goldmsith’s leaflets. I add my support to the amendments tabled by my hon.”
“From today, if we do not take a stand with this Bill to tackle the ways that money has infiltrated our politics, the risk is that they will think we are acting in the interests of our own back pockets.”
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“Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) about it being the thin end of the wedge, but I see this as a temporary way of dealing with something that this place is centrally about: protecting the human rights of every UK citizen. Those of us who are strong defenders of devolution and human rights tread carefully. Section 26 of the Northern Ireland Act 1998 charges this place with upholding our international obligations for the whole United Kingdom, even when the Assembly is sitting. As we have now not had an Assembly for two years, and as it is unlikely the Assembly will have sat for three years at this rate, it is even more important that we ask what our obligations are so that we do not see human rights denied.”
“It is a genuine pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert), and I agree with every word he said. I will be proud to vote today for new clause 1 in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for St Helens North (Conor McGinn), who is now leaving the Chamber. He made an incredibly powerful speech. I also support amendment 9. I rise to address new clause 10 with great reluctance, because none of us wanted the governance of Northern Ireland to be in this position today. We all want to speak up for the importance of devolution but, as my hon. Friend said, human rights delayed are human rights denied. New clause 1, new clause 10 and amendment 9 all speak to the human rights challenges. I understand the concerns of the hon.”
“Medical regulations could be introduced, but it would be done through a statutory instrument. It does not prescribe what the regulations would be, so it does not remove any of the protections the hon. Gentleman talks about.”
“Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley) in Northern Ireland. A thousand women from Northern Ireland have had to travel to England and Wales to have an abortion in the last year, and those are just the women who can travel. What a horrible, lonely journey to ask somebody to make at the most vulnerable moment in their life. That option is not available to women in an abusive relationship, who cannot get childcare or who cannot afford to travel. New clause 10 is carefully crafted to respect the fact that, at the moment, we do not have an Assembly. If there were an Assembly, it could step in and deal with the criticisms that have been levelled at us by the UN. It could deal with the decisions made by the Supreme Court, which have not been enacted only because of a technicality. New clause 10 would mean these situations can be dealt with.”
“In fact, new clause 10 is crafted in terms of statutory instruments under the Northern Ireland Act. I am mindful that the British Medical Association, the Royal College of General Practitioners, the Royal College of Midwives, and the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists have all set out proposals for medical guidance. Absolutely, abortion should be regulated. Absolutely, there should be clear guidelines. Nobody is seeking to change the term limit we have in England and Wales. The question is whether the law should be underpinned by criminal legislation or medical regulation, which is what new clause 10 would allow us to consider. It would therefore allow us to answer the question about the inequality of experience between my constituents in Walthamstow and the constituents of the hon.”
“I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising those issues, which are myths that need to be dispelled, although I understand his concerns. The CEDAW report talks about the Offences Against the Person Act 1861, which is why a woman who is raped in Northern Ireland and seeks a termination after becoming pregnant will face a longer prison sentence than her attacker. It is why, in November, a mother who bought abortion pills online for her child—she was a child, because she was a 15-year-old girl in an abusive relationship—faces a jail sentence. We must deal with the effects of this anachronistic, ancient law in Northern Ireland. My constituents, and constituents across England and Wales, are exempted from that Act, but it does not mean a free-for-all.”
“Thank you, Dame Rosie. It is simply not the case that people have not been prosecuted. A mother is facing a jail sentence in November. We know that, in 2017, a man and woman accepted formal cautions under OPA for the same offence, and the charges were withdrawn only after the judge imposed a ban on identifying the woman due to the heightened risk of her suicide because of her distress at the situation. We know that, in 2016, a 21-year-old pleaded guilty to procuring her own abortion by poison after she bought pills online and her flatmate reported her to the police. Prosecution is a very real prospect in Northern Ireland, but it is not a real prospect for my constituents in another part of the United Kingdom who are in exactly the same situation.”
“The cases where there have been prosecutions, where people have been killed and where we see online the stories of these women tell us that abortion is still happening for Northern Irish women, but right now that issue is being exported, rather than dealt with as an equalities issue. So I ask the Committee: how much longer are the women of Northern Ireland expected to wait? How much more are they expected to suffer before we speak up—the best of what this place does—as human rights defenders, not human rights deniers?”
“This is about a power of a statutory instrument; it is not about specifying what should be in that statutory instrument, so there is plenty of scope to address these issues. Medical guidelines have been prepared by campaigners in Northern Ireland, be they Alliance for Choice, the London-Irish Abortion Rights Campaign, Together for Yes or those medical agencies. There is a simple point here: each of us should want, in the work that we do at a national and international level, the same rights that we want for our own constituents. I would like every woman in Walthamstow to be able to have the choice to have a safe, legal and local abortion if she wants it. We all know that stopping people accessing abortion legally does not stop abortion.”
“Are we going to say that in Northern Ireland people will not have the same rights of freedom of expression, of protection from slavery and of protection from torture, and the same rights to life? Specific human rights, and specific international reports and obligations that we have been part of, are at the heart of this amendment. We will not be able to stand up and champion human rights in other parts of the world, because other countries will rightly turn to us and say, “Hang about, what about your own backyard? What are you doing there?” I understand that, if it was not for the fact that we do not have an Assembly, this would absolutely not be the right way forward, but we do not have an Assembly and we will not have one any time soon.”
“Forgive me, but I have given way. I am conscious that other people want to speak in this debate. I understand the concerns of the right hon. Member for Basingstoke, who is no longer here, but I genuinely believe that if we do not address the international obligations that we have—and that this legislation leaves us unable to address at the moment—we will continue to see these cases. We will continue to see the distress of women in Northern Ireland, and that will be a human rights issue. There is a more fundamental point here, which the right hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs talked about: if we are prepared to jettison some human rights and say that they are not as important as others, that is the thin end of the wedge.”
“These are core freedoms that each of us has come into this place to uphold. They are issues on which we need to work together.”
“It is important for those of us who are proud of devolution, of being able to give power to people and of ensuring that they can exercise it, that we recognise the check and balance that this place provides in that process. Section 26 speaks precisely to that when it comes to human rights. There is a specific definition of human rights. It is not about a single policy area; it is about a set of rules and obligations that we as the United Kingdom have signed up to for generations, and now find that we particularly need to uphold. This relates to a woman’s right to choose what happens to her body and to a person’s right to choose to marry who they love and have that recognised. Human rights speak to basic freedoms—not the freedom to do what we want, but the freedom to be who we are without feeling that that makes us second-class citizens.”
“I am also conscious that the civil servants have said that they feel uncomfortable about the position they have been put in and about the fact that this legislation has been pushed through Parliament as an emergency measure, when, as people have said, we are now looking at three years without any change in the situation in Stormont. I have been working on the Back Benches with colleagues in every other party—except the DUP at the moment—on these issues because we recognise that there are two sides of the coin. This relates particularly to the amendments that I want to support tomorrow. The human rights issues that they raise go to section 26 of the Northern Ireland Act 1998, which charged this place with the responsibility to uphold our international obligations, even when there was an Assembly in Northern Ireland.”
“I am pleased that the Government have recognised that they should not try to suggest that this new piece of legislation is just a narrow, small change in the date, when what it is doing is extending those quite substantial powers to make legislation and change the law in Northern Ireland that were given six months ago on what was presumed to be a temporary basis. The Bill requires scrutiny; I particularly contest its powers around statutory instruments, which we know have been controversial in other areas of policy. Indeed, many of us have already sat on Statutory Instrument Committees about making direct change in Northern Ireland. We need to scrutinise not just the date, but the use of those statutory instrument powers.”
“Sometimes in this place people forget just how powerfully we feel, because of how we spend our lives. I hate it when people talk about politicians being out of touch, because we do nothing but be in touch, whatever political party we represent. We live, breathe and feel the frustrations of our constituents, and we are all here tonight because we feel their frustration that this piece of legislation was put forward six months ago as a temporary stopgap in the hope that progress could somehow be made. It was suggested that it was a necessary evil.”
“I echo the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for St Helens North (Conor McGinn) in paying tribute to my hon. Friends the Members for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey) and for Ealing North (Stephen Pound); the latter is sitting on the Front Bench. I have known him a very long time. I shall always be incredibly grateful for his support and enthusiasm in teaching me the power of the woggle, the necker and small children to effect great change in this country. He will be missed by many in this House, because he is a great friend of scouting. I also pay tribute to the hon. Members for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson) and for Belfast South (Emma Little Pengelly) for setting out so clearly and emotively the passion that people feel at this time and for talking about it from a constituency perspective.”
“I recognise that the hon. Gentleman and I are on different sides of this, but if he will forgive me, I will come to the international obligations that we as a country have signed up to that I believe are relevant in considering this Bill. This Bill allows for action in the absence of an Assembly, but it does not absolve us of our responsibility to comply with international obligations.”
“They do not have coercive control legislation, and will not get the support of the domestic violence commissioners, yet the Istanbul convention is a piece of international legislation that we have signed up to and committed to. We have said that it speaks to our support for human rights. On abortion in Northern Ireland, in the years since we had an Assembly, we have been directly criticised by the United Nations. The United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women has explicitly said that the UK cannot invoke its internal arrangements to justify its failure to revise the Northern Ireland laws that violate the convention by denying women in Northern Ireland the same rights as women in my constituency of Walthamstow or the Minister’s constituency: the right to have a safe, legal and local abortion.”
“We are told consistently by the international agencies that we have signed up to that we have a problem in Northern Ireland—in particular, that we are treating women there as second-class citizens. This Bill speaks to what we do in the absence of an Assembly that is able to fulfil those international obligations. If those obligations do not mean anything, what does this place do, when sometimes it has to speak for those whose voices cannot be heard? I was at the Council of Europe two weeks ago, when the Government were boasting about being about to ratify the Istanbul convention on violence against women, but the legislation that the Government have introduced to try to do that will not even cover Northern Ireland. The Bill before us will not deal with the gap, so women in Northern Ireland will not have protection from stalking.”
“There was an outcry in this country when people saw legislation introduced in Alabama under which doctors are prosecuted for performing abortions, while Georgia is saying that no woman can have an abortion later than six weeks, by which time most women do not even realise that they might be pregnant. There is a simple rule for those of us who have been consistent—as I hope that the hon. Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson) would recognise that many of us have been—whether we have fought the global gag rule, or stood up for the importance of international development investment in maternity healthcare. We cannot argue that we are beacons of human rights around the world if we do not get our own house in order.”
“If the right hon. Gentleman will allow me, I will make a little progress and then happily take an intervention from him. For me, there is a simple point. This weekend, many of us will have proudly celebrated Pride. We will have seen the rainbow flag and talked about the importance of standing up for the rights of gays, lesbians and transgender people across the world. We have seen persecution in Chechnya and in Europe under the Orbán legislation, and we have stood up and said that we as a nation want to be a beacon. We have even said that we should kick countries out of the Commonwealth that do not uphold gay rights.”
“I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I gently suggest that he goes back and reads section 26 of the 1998 Act, which explicitly does not do what he says it does. It explicitly says— [ Interruption. ] With respect, I listened to him; I hope he will listen to me, because this is the debate that we need to have about this legislation. I have listened to him— [ Interruption. ]”
“It said the law in Northern Ireland is “untenable” and needs “radical reconsideration”, as it treats women like “vehicles.” The courts are looking to this Parliament, because the Offences Against the Person Act 1861 was passed by Westminster, so it needs to be dealt with by Westminster, which would need to enable the people of Northern Ireland, if the Assembly were back up and running, to craft their own laws on this issue. The right hon. Gentleman cannot have it both ways. Either we take responsibility for the impact of UK-wide legislation crafted in this place and for the international human rights obligations that we as a Parliament have sworn to protect, or we say that it is okay to treat some of our people as second-class citizens and not give them the services we give to others.”
“We need to say that those international obligations are equally our responsibility. The right hon. Gentleman might disagree about those obligations, but he cannot deny that, right now, there is a gap on this very issue. That is why it is right that we have introduced proposals to try to address the gap, so that people in Northern Ireland are not put at a disadvantage. He shakes his head again. Perhaps he will listen to our Supreme Court, which has found that the situation in Northern Ireland is incompatible with article 8 of the European convention on human rights with respect to fatal foetal abnormalities and to women who become pregnant due to rape or incest.”
“I understand that he has quoted a QC, but again I would point him to those international bodies, including the Vienna convention, that say that we cannot absolve ourselves of those international obligations through our internal arrangements, and the UN Committee against Torture, which just this month said that the situation in Northern Ireland was “likely to result in severe pain and suffering, such as when the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest, when the life or health of the pregnant person is at risk and in cases of fatal fetal impairment.” We are being explicitly challenged on human rights, and there are grounds in the Istanbul convention— [ Interruption. ] The right hon. Gentleman shakes his head. Above all else, this Bill is about how we help to ensure that people in Northern Ireland do not have the current gap.”
“The 1998 Act explicitly says that the Westminster Parliament retains responsibility for upholding those international obligations. The right hon. Gentleman also asked about the concept of abortion as a human right.”
“Let us be very clear. The reason why a woman in Northern Ireland who is raped, becomes pregnant and then seeks a termination faces a longer prison sentence than her attacker is because of the 1861 Act. It is because of that Act that, in November 2018, a mother faced a jail sentence because she sought abortion pills online to try to help her 15-year-old daughter, who was in an abusive relationship. This legislation is affecting the lives of UK citizens. When these issues are not being dealt with due to the lack of an Assembly, and when the Government, who have sworn to fulfil these international obligations, are saying that we will just have a big exclusionary gap when it comes to Northern Ireland, what do we do as parliamentarians? We all swore to uphold the Good Friday agreement and joint equivalency.”
“Thousands of citizens in Northern Ireland have emailed their MPs in support of change. Thousands of citizens in Northern Ireland have said, “Please don’t make us wait anymore,” just as thousands have said they want the right to love whom they love, to marry them and to have that recognised. We know people want change, and we know that, in 2016, 70% of people in Northern Ireland said that no woman should ever go to prison for having an abortion, but that is the situation we are in. We know that 65% of adults in Northern Ireland—”
“I have listened, and I want to meet my obligation to not make a long speech—an obligation that we have all been trying to uphold this evening. I promise that I am coming to an end, and I have taken interventions.”
“The amendments tomorrow and the ruse of those statutory instruments are crucial, and that is because of the words of Lyra McKee’s partner, Sara Canning, who said to the Prime Minister at Lyra’s funeral: “I wanted her to know that Lyra and I had a right to be treated as equal citizens in our own country. Surely that’s not too much to ask?” We can pass legislation about the powers of politics and the powers of this place, but fundamentally the power of this place cannot be to deny the basic human rights of our citizens. The people who live in Northern Ireland deserve the same human rights as the people who live in England and Wales. Either we are champions of human rights or we do not deserve to call ourselves parliamentarians.”
“That cannot be a human right. That is torture, and we cannot keep waiting for the Assembly to deal with it. We do not expect citizens in England and Wales to go through a referendum on this; we cannot put that extra layer on the people of Northern Ireland in order for them to get their human rights. If we take this course on the right not to be forced to continue an unwanted pregnancy, or the right to love whom we love, what other human rights will we sacrifice for political expediency? The right to life and liberty? The right to be free from slavery and torture? Freedom of opinion and expression? It is a slippery slope to start saying that the human rights obligations that we have signed up to do not matter when we write legislation.”
“I am also talking about our ability to listen to the voices of women such as Sarah Ewart, who are looking for change—women who tell us that they could not go through another pregnancy because their last one nearly killed them in childbirth. We ask that every woman has the choice to not be forced to continue with an unwanted pregnancy. Women do not want to face prosecution because they stood up for their children. Last year, 1,000 women travelled to England and Wales to get an abortion, but many more cannot travel; they might be in abusive relationships, they might have childcare issues or they might not be able to afford it. We have to remember that there is no right at all here, not even in instances of rape or fatal foetal abnormality. Current laws force women in Northern Ireland to carry a baby they know will not live.”
“Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. We also know that 66% of the public in Northern Ireland think that Westminster should reform the law in the absence of a devolved Government. This Bill deals with that absence and the unlikelihood of our ever getting an Assembly set up in the current situation. DUP Members have very clearly set out many of the frustrations that might be preventing that, but above all, that does not mean that the voices and rights—particularly human rights—of the people of Northern Ireland should play second fiddle to political frustrations. If we have learned anything in this place, it is that when we put politics ahead of people, we all lose out.”
“I have been inundated with complaints from local residents about a second-hand car sales company in my community that variously goes by the names BD Trade Sales, Leabridge Motors, Diamond Motors and many more. Members may be aware of its work from programmes such as “Rogue Traders”, “Don’t Get Done, Get Dom”, “Watchdog” and “The Sheriffs Are Coming”. Despite the evidence about how it is ripping off consumers, the council, trading standards and the police have not been able to stop it. Will the Minister meet me to talk about what we can do to hold these phoenix companies to account, so that we get dodgy cars off the roads and get consumers a better deal?”
“The Secretary of State may not accept the moral case for keeping the pledge in his manifesto, but there is a good, cold, hard economic case for resolving this too. He said earlier that pensioners would not go to prison, but we know that people go prison for not being able to pay the fine for not holding a licence. Does he accept that the cost to the public purse of the prosecutions and the potential incarceration of pensioners, and indeed the consequences of pensioner poverty, far outweigh any benefit from this? Just like the bedroom tax, this is a false economy. Rather than avoiding responsibility for it, the Secretary of State should act on behalf of public taxpayers and get it sorted.”
“The report paints a powerful picture of many of the issues faced by those of us working in communities with children who are at risk of violence and of being violent, and in particular the all-too-familiar story that when a child is excluded from school that sometimes means they are forgotten, rather than it being a trigger for intervention. In Walthamstow, over the past year, we as a community have been looking at mentoring in our schools, to try to work with some of these young people. Will the Secretary of State meet me and some of the community groups involved in that work, to see what we can learn from it and help to ensure that every child has a bright future within education?”
“The Minister put her finger on it when she said that this is going to be about some tough decisions. She expressed concern about describing this as a climate emergency because what she really wanted to do was to move the dial. Ireland has been able to move the dial not by leaving the public out on the streets but by bringing them into a citizens’ assembly—a proper citizens’ assembly that hears the views not just of the activists but of everyone. That has supported carbon taxes and an end to subsidies for peat extraction, meaning that Ireland is now the first country to divest from fossil fuel. Will the Minister meet me and others who are supportive of the idea of a citizens’ assembly to talk about whether that is the cross-party, cross-country way forward by which we can actually tackle this climate emergency?”
“In the days following her brutal murder, Lyra’s words have been shared around the world. It is not hard to see why. Just a few weeks ago, she wrote on social media: “Derry is such a beautiful city. I’ve fallen in love with it over the past year, while falling in love with a woman who hails from it. Here’s to better times ahead and saying goodbye to bombs and bullets once and for all.” Can there be no better tribute that we make to Lyra than pledging ourselves to achieving her dream in her name?”
“The Prime Minister will be relieved to hear that I am not going to ask to dip into her stash of cough sweets, but I want to follow up on something she said to the right hon. Member for Meriden (Dame Caroline Spelman). The Prime Minister said one of the things she wants to do with the time now available to her is to hear what businesses and the public think about all the things in front of us. Does she recognise that the fairest, most inclusive and most democratic way to do that would be to learn from other countries and have a citizens’ assembly?”
“In the absence of devolved government, the direct decisions being made by Westminster for Northern Ireland are increasing every day, whether on the Offensive Weapons Bill, the Healthcare (International Arrangements) Bill, the two-child policy, or even what will happen with the Open golf tournament. The Secretary of State tells us that she respects devolution, but these decisions are being made behind closed doors with civil servants and without the involvement of the people or representatives of Northern Ireland. If she thinks that is acceptable, will she publish in full a list of all the policy decisions she has made under this new legislation, including the legislative consent motions and who has signed them off, so that we know who is really running Northern Ireland?”
“I have a slightly different question for the Minister. He just spoke about his gratitude to the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly Government for their work on the legislative consent motions that these statutory instruments require. I note that in the explanatory memorandum it says that consent has also been sought from Northern Ireland. For the record, I would like the process by which consent has been sought from Northern Ireland on the measures to be set out.”
“For the avoidance of doubt, could the Minister set out what he believes to be the relevant devolved Authority for giving consent? He has said that in addition to the legislative consent motion, the Northern Ireland Department of Health and the Northern Ireland Office had been consulted, and had given consent. I do not want to get this wrong, so could the Minister clarify which bits which Departments have given consent to, and which relevant devolved Authority he believes will give consent to this motion at this point in time?”
“I beg the Minister’s indulgence. For the avoidance of doubt, is he saying that consent to the orders will be given in Westminster for the specific Northern Ireland elements of the statutory instrument? Can he confirm that that is what he is telling us about the legislation?”
“He may say to me, “Well, there isn’t a functioning Assembly in Northern Ireland”—many of us know that all too well—but he owes the people of Northern Ireland the honesty and decency to admit that, since the Government are using that piece of legislation on measures such as this and claiming a very broad interpretation of the national interest, we now have direct rule in this place for the people of Northern Ireland. If the motions were unbundled, it might be a different matter, because those of us who believe in democracy believe that the people of Northern Ireland have a right to that truth. Because they are not unbundled, we cannot do that, so I am putting on record the Labour party’s concerns about the way in which the people of Northern Ireland have been treated in this statutory instrument.”
“He talked about the Northern Ireland (Executive Formation and Exercise of Functions) Act 2018 and laying an SI, and he said clearly that consent has been given for this legislation not by elected representatives of the people of Northern Ireland, as the legislation sought to do under traditional legislative consent motions, but in fact by bureaucrats and by people here in Westminster. The Minister will know that healthcare is a devolved issue; that is why I asked him all those questions about how the Government are using the 2018 Act. It is clear from this SI that their concept of the national interest is being stretched to cover bureaucrats and people in this place making decisions on behalf of the people of Northern Ireland.”
“It is always a pleasure to serve under your august chairmanship, Sir David. I rise simply to put on record a concern that many of us have, having heard what the Minister has said about this matter. We recognise that we are hampered by the fact that many SIs are being bundled together. With many of these SIs, as the hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk pointed out, we do not want to be in this situation at all, because many of us have such concerns about Brexit. However, we understand that the necessary legislation needs to be there should the worst happen, and therefore we cannot unbundle these SIs to express our concerns in particular about the SI relating to Northern Ireland. I want to put on record that the Minister has essentially admitted that, by the process he has set out, we are facing direct rule in Northern Ireland.”
“The Northern Ireland (Executive Formation and Exercise of Functions) Act 2018 explicitly sets out that Ministers must also have regard to representations made by Members of the Northern Ireland Assembly. What efforts has the Minister made to seek the views of Members of the Northern Ireland Assembly on these particular statutory instruments? Even if the Assembly is not sitting, it is written into that Act that its Members should be able to make representations. Can he clarify what he has done in that respect, please?”
“The Minister says the House is in a state of indecision; it is not. The House has repeatedly decided: it decided on 15 January, on 12 March and on 13 March. In fact, it has decided repeatedly, every single week for the past few weeks, to say no to the Prime Minister. The House also wants to get on and make decisions. My right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) talked about the cross-party amendment; if the House votes for that amendment and gets the opportunity to move things on, will the Government honour the will of the House—yes or no?”
“The Minister is right to call for accounts of the conduct of Hamas in this situation, but this report also gives us clear evidence about the consequences for the people in Gaza of what happened last summer. It also gives us evidence of what is happening now; in particular, we see that the healthcare system in Gaza is still not able to cope with the consequences, with 8,000 elective surgeries being cancelled because medical staff have had to deal with the aftermath of the violence. May we press the Minister? He may not agree with the report, but we can all agree that we should take practical action in the light of what it shows us. Will he do more to help those struggling with healthcare in Gaza as a result?”