John Bercow
Main Page: John Bercow (Speaker - Buckingham)Department Debates - View all John Bercow's debates with the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office
(5 years, 7 months ago)
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Several hon. Members rose—
Mr Speaker
I call the man brandishing a report of the Foreign Affairs Committee, which he once chaired and of which he remains a distinguished ornament: Mr Mike Gapes.
Mike Gapes (Ilford South) (Lab/Co-op)
The Select Committee’s unanimously agreed report on “The Responsibility to Protect and Humanitarian Intervention”, published today, says:
“There has been a manifest failure to protect civilians and to prevent mass atrocity crimes in Syria.”
It calls for an independent inquiry to investigate the processes that lead to and the consequences of the Government’s decision not to intervene in Syria. We could have intervened in 2011, with humanitarian corridors and no-fly zones, and the Minister referred to the 2013 debate and others. However, why are we quite happy to hold inquiries when we do intervene, such as with Iraq, but not when we do not intervene? As the Committee points out, the consequences of non-intervention by the international community can be worse than those of intervention.