US National Security Strategy

Liam Byrne Excerpts

Thursday 11th December 2025 Commons Chamber

[Seema Malhotra]

I thank the hon. Member for his comments. I disagree with some aspects of what he said. It is important to say that national security is our first priority. We discuss matters of interest around the world regularly with the US, and we work on this security partnership through NATO, Five Eyes and a range of other international institutions.

It is important to recognise President Trump’s efforts to secure peace around the world, whether it is his role in Gaza or his work, in a process that we support, to secure peace in Ukraine. While we disagree with some aspects of the national security strategy, it is for the US to set its own strategy, and for us to have our own strategy and values. Indeed, friends and allies should respect each other’s choices and traditions.

[Liam Byrne (Birmingham Hodge Hill and Solihull North) (Lab)]

The language of the US national security strategy is deeply regrettable. Frankly, it is not hard to see the rhymes with some extreme right-wing tropes that date back to the 1930s.

The publication of this document came at the same time as the collapse of talks about the UK joining the European Union Security Action for Europe programme to help boost rearmament, so it is now essential that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western) said, the Government specify the sovereign capabilities that we have decided to adopt in this country. It is essential that we now implement the recommendations of the Business and Trade Committee’s report on economic security. I am afraid that it is vital that we begin opening talks with our closest neighbours in the European Union about the kind of economic security union that could draw our countries closer together, and help provide the economic support and growth that rearmament will require.

[Seema Malhotra]

I thank my right hon. Friend for the work that he does on his Committee, which very much informs the work of Government. I agree that it is important for the UK to continue to develop its own capabilities, and to work closely with allies on security, not just to make sure that the UK is strongly defended, but in the interests of prosperity and security across the world.

Budget Resolutions

Liam Byrne Excerpts

Wednesday 26th November 2025 Commons Chamber

[Liam Byrne (Birmingham Hodge Hill and Solihull North) (Lab)]

I do not know what Budget the right hon. Member for Hertsmere (Sir Oliver Dowden) was reading, but it was not the Budget that was put on the table this afternoon. I think the Chancellor got the judgment exactly right today. She had a difficult inheritance, a difficult hand and difficult decisions to take, but she got the calls absolutely right. Under the Budget, growth this year and business investment over the course of this Parliament are forecast to rise, and inflation is coming down. Forecast interest rates are coming down, energy bills for our constituents are coming down, and child poverty is set to collapse. That means that 8,900 people in my constituency will be better off because of this Budget—a Labour Budget delivered by a Labour Chancellor this afternoon.

I have been in this House for 21 years. I have sat on both Front Benches and on both sets of Back Benches, and over the years I have seen the selective amnesia that bedevils debate in this place, and the problem of unreliable narrators, but I have to say that I have never seen amnesia on as epic a scale as I did from the Leader of the Opposition today. It is quite well established that back in 2010, I thought the numbers were a little bit tight. I thought difficult decisions were going to be needed, which is why we left a judiciously balanced Budget—two thirds spending cuts, one third taxes rises—that would have halved the deficit in four years and brought debt borrowing down by 2016. That, of course, was not the strategy pursued by the last Government, and what difference did that make? The Conservatives saddled this country with an extraordinary £1 trillion of debt more than the situation we left. That is why we are paying £1 in every £10 in interest rates today—it is because they more than doubled the national debt.

[Simon Hoare]

rose—

[Liam Byrne]

Before we hear any nonsense about covid, let us remember that 80% to 90% of the increase in debt that the Conservatives saddled us with came before the covid lockdowns began.

[Simon Hoare]

Oh, it is nothing as contemporary as covid—don’t worry about that. I just wondered how much money the right hon. Member left in the coffers when he was Chief Secretary in 2010.

[Liam Byrne]

I can tell the hon. Member. I do not know what his facility with maths is like, or if he realises that a trillion has 12 noughts, but we left the national debt £1 trillion lower than it is today—£2.7 trillion. That is how much this country is now borrowing.

The great tragedy is that if the previous Government had borrowed money at low interest costs and invested it in something that enhanced productivity, we would be in a better position today and the Chancellor would not have had to deliver the Budget she had to deliver today. Don’t take my word for it; the International Monetary Fund was clear in its report on 25 July that our productivity growth under the Conservatives collapsed by a third compared with the good old new Labour years. Our productivity divergence with the United States is so serious. Our productivity growth has been half that of the United States, and the OBR is clear today that the downgrade on growth that it has baked into its numbers is entirely due to the productivity collapse because the Conservatives wasted the money during their 14 years in office.

I should just say, by the bye, that because the Conservatives are the Conservatives, they managed to put £1 trillion on the debt and to collapse the productivity numbers, and still to put inequality through the roof. That is why we have all had food bank queues in our constituencies that we will never forget. I will never forget for as long as I live the phenomenon of collecting food in inner-city Birmingham because our food banks had run out of food. I will never forget the children at Adderley school who were literally helping restock our food banks by taking Penguin bars out of their lunch boxes to put them in food collection crates so their classmates did not go hungry at lunch time. That is the reality of the child poverty legacy the Conservatives left us with, and that is the legacy that the Chancellor got to grips with today.

The Business and Trade Committee looks forward to scrutinising the proposals that have been laid out today. We have been travelling the country over the last couple of weeks talking to businesses about what they wanted out of this Budget, and three things were clear. These are isles of wonder. We now stand on the threshold of an extraordinary new era of innovation. This is an extraordinary and inventive country; we have been since the industrial revolution started in Birmingham back in 1761, but that will be nothing compared to what is about to unfold in this country. We are at the front of the grid in the race for the 21st century, but we need to mobilise capital on a completely new scale. That is why certainty, certainty, certainty for business was so important. I welcome the fact that the headroom has been put up to £22 billion today.

I welcome the fact that the Chancellor is ending the biannual circus of fiscal speculation by having one forecast a year. I have to say to the House that I seriously think that Mr Hughes needs to consider his position. The fact that we had a leak of the OBR forecast before this House got to debate the Budget is appalling, and this uncertainty has bedevilled us. Alongside that, we have to step up the mobilisation of capital on a completely different scale.

[Paul Waugh (Rochdale) (Lab/Co-op)]

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[Liam Byrne]

I will in a moment.

That is why I absolutely welcome the package that the Chancellor has set out today to mobilise investment capital in a radical new way: the expanding of enterprise management incentives, the boosting of the venture capital trusts, and UK listing relief. That is almost £3 billion of extra incentives for entrepreneurs in this country. That is a game changer not just for start-ups, but for scale-ups, so we can end the craziness of brilliant inventors in this country starting new businesses, growing them nicely and then them having snapped up and shifted out to the United States. We have to ensure that we are growing and fostering more big, global dominating companies here in this country, so I welcome the way the Chancellor leant in behind those firms today.

The third thing we have to do is to improve the return on investments made in this country. That means a couple of things. It means bringing down energy costs radically. We did not have a business energy cost scheme scored in the Budget today, but that is because I know the Government are out to consultation on it. Every single member of the Committee would implore the Government to do whatever it takes to ensure that business energy costs in this country are internationally competitive. It is wrong that firms like Nissan say to us that their energy costs up in Sunderland are the most expensive of any Nissan plant in the world. We must bring business energy costs down.

Alongside that, the message that we hear from small businesses in particular is that we must bring down business rates. From looking at the policy decisions in the scorecard, it looks like there is a £4.2 billion subsidy to help bring business rates down. That should mean that we have the lowest business rates this country has seen, which is a good thing, but I urge the Chancellor to go further by cutting the cost of red tape in a bold and radical way.

As the Committee travelled around the country, business after business told us that they want not just less red tape but better regulation. Crucially, they want Departments and regulators to co-ordinate with each other, so that we do not have one Department over here making one decision and another over there making a different one. Ensuring that the Whitehall machine moves at the speed of business in this new age of AI will be more and more important as a competitive advantage. This is one of the best places in the world to be an inventor or build a start-up business. We now need to ensure that we are one of the best places in the world to scale up a business. That will be the nature of the questions that the Committee will put to Ministers over the weeks to come.

One thing above all shone through in the Chancellor’s statement: ambition for, and confidence in, the future of this country. That is why one of the most important numbers we will read in the OBR forecast is that business investment is not flat or falling but is set to soar by £6 billion over the forecast period. That ambition for this country stands in stark contrast to the amnesia of the Conservative party. That is because we on the Labour Benches know how futures are really built.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories

Liam Byrne Excerpts

Wednesday 4th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mr Falconer]

I am grateful for the right hon. Gentleman’s words. There are clearly profound issues with the new aid distribution mechanism. That is not just the view of the British Government; it is clearly the view of the GHF itself, given that it has suspended operations after three very bloody days. Exactly as the right hon. Gentleman says, there are insufficient aid distribution centres and very dangerous crowds, and we have seen terrible violence associated with the distributions. I would be very happy if there was a mechanism in place at this moment that could provide aid properly, but waiting on the outskirts of Gaza—in al-Arish and elsewhere—is a United Nations operation with more than 18 months’ experience of doing that and making sure that everybody gets the aid they need. We must not delay. We have both the aid and the delivery partners—we should let them in.

[Liam Byrne (Birmingham Hodge Hill and Solihull North) (Lab)]

The barbarism of Benjamin Netanyahu’s Government against the Palestinian people is beyond belief. We should not be negotiating trade deals with the Israeli Government, we should not have trade envoys on the ground, and we should not delay recognition of the state of Palestine. The Business and Trade Committee, backed by my hon. Friend the Members for Slough (Mr Dhesi) and for Rotherham (Sarah Champion), is determined to get to the bottom of UK arms exports. I am grateful to the Business Minister for confirming last night that he will appear before the Committee before the summer recess. Can the Minister confirm tonight that a Foreign Office Minister will be alongside him?

[Mr Falconer]

I make it a habit not to confirm the schedules of my ministerial colleagues. Of course, it is the Minister for Europe—who has responsibility for the overall licensing regime—who has appeared before my right hon. Friend’s Committee. Let me be clear to the House: there is no effort to conceal our position on arms licences. We have set it out to this House on a number of occasions. The Minister for Trade, my right hon. Friend the Member for Lothian East (Mr Alexander), set out some of the numbers on Monday. We have taken exceptional measures to try to show more transparency than is usual about the arms licensing regime. We are having that discussion not just in this place, but in the courts. There is no effort on the part of this Government to be anything other than transparent—not only with this House, but with the Israeli Government themselves—about the nature of our decisions.

Israel and Palestine

Liam Byrne Excerpts

Monday 16th December 2024 Westminster Hall

[Liam Byrne (Birmingham Hodge Hill and Solihull North) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to speak in this debate, Mrs Harris. First things first: I utterly condemn the attacks on 7 October. I utterly condemn the kidnap, torture and murder of hostages by Hamas. I also utterly deplore and condemn the destruction of Palestine and Palestinian life that has ensued. That destruction is now so complete that Israel is at risk of turning Gaza into a desert and calling it peace. The prosecution of the war is now so brutal that the Foreign Secretary himself said on 2 September that any exports of weapons from here lead to

“a clear risk that they might be used to commit or facilitate a serious violation of international humanitarian law.”—[Official Report, 2 September 2024; Vol. 753, c. 42.]

[Kim Johnson (Liverpool Riverside) (Lab)]

On arms sales, does my right hon. Friend agree that the UK Government need to make a different decision about F-35 parts, think about employing an immediate ceasefire, cease selling arms to Israel and impose sanctions to bring about peace?

[Liam Byrne]

Let me come to exactly that argument. The Foreign Secretary was followed by the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, who said that there were now “significant doubts” about Israel’s “record of compliance”. In court, His Majesty’s Government said bluntly, in their opening statement on 12 November 2024, that Israel is

“not committed to complying with international humanitarian law”.

Yet the Government have not cancelled all licences; they have cancelled some, but not all, and they have kept open the licences for F-35 parts.

[Carla Denyer (Bristol Central) (Green)]

Will the right hon. Member give way?

[Liam Byrne]

I will not, because time is so short.

Last week, in front of the Business and Trade Committee, a Defence Minister said that although it is technically possible to track the parts, it is contractually impossible. Indeed, Lockheed Martin has supplied me with a letter that states that, if I want to know anything about the parts, I need to address my queries to the Department of Defence in the United States.

The Government defend their case by pointing to the 28 words that allow them to make it up as they go along when it comes to weapons exports. Those words were written by the last Government and were published in the House on 8 December 2021. They state:

“The application of these Criteria”—

the selective licensing criteria—

“will be without prejudice to the application to specific cases of specific measures as may be announced to Parliament from time to time.”

There we have it. However, what Ministers have not explained is the part of criterion 1 that states:

“The Government will not grant a licence if to do so would be inconsistent with…the UK’s obligations under the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty”.

Of course, the UN arms trade treaty is very clear. Article 7 requires this Government, as a signatory, to assess any items that we may seek to export. If there is an overriding risk of the use of those weapons to commit or facilitate a serious violation of international humanitarian law,

“the exporting State Party shall not authorize the export.”

Now, if there was any question, doubt or dispute about whether F-35 parts that we supply could be used in such a way, perhaps the Government would have a case for keeping the licences open. But there is nodoubt, dispute or question about the Government’s analysis of F-35 parts, because in their opening statement to the High Court on 12 November 2024, they said:

“The F-35 carve-out accepts that there is clear risk that F-35 components might be used to commit or facilitate a serious violation of IHL”.

We now have the advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice, the arrest warrants and the Government’s own assessment. I cannot see how this Government can now legally defend a position of keeping these arms export licences open.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Falconer]

I want to be clear to my hon. Friend and to everybody here that the direct selling of F-35 parts to Israel has now been suspended; it is indirectly that we are not in a position to determine the end user. Members are saying that we could determine the end user. I reiterate the Government’s position that the global supply chain is critical to the operation of the F-35 programme and that we cannot suspend licences to end users in the way that my hon. Friend would like without imperilling that.

[Liam Byrne]

I am grateful to the Minister for giving way; he is being characteristically generous. As I understand it, we cannot track F-35 parts because we have signed a contract that basically renders us blind when they leave our borders. Technically, it is possible; the Ministry of Defence has said that. The issue the Minister has to address is that article 7 of the arms trade treaty is very clear that if there is an overriding risk of a breach of IHL, exports should not be made. His Government’s own submission to the courts is that that risk exists. We cannot have it both ways.

[Mr Falconer]

My right hon. Friend is making two distinct arguments. One is that we know who the end user is but cannot practically stop it, but we can also maintain the F-35 programme. The Government’s position is that we cannot take action on the global spares pool without bringing the F-35 programme into peril, which would have implications for international peace and security. That is the position of the Government. On the article of the arms trade treaty to which he refers, it is clear that consideration needs to be given to international peace and security. It is on that basis that we have set out our position.

Another Member asked me about the legal advice. We have set out the legal position as clearly as we possibly can—more clearly than any previous Government has on such a decision. It is being tested in the courts. We are proceeding with the utmost transparency on these questions.

War in Gaza

Liam Byrne Excerpts

Tuesday 7th May 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mr Mitchell]

The hon. Lady refers to a number of early incidents, which have been condemned. She will know that, in respect of each of those incidents, the Government have said that we want an independent and credible investigation and transparent conclusions, so that we know why and how those acts took place.

[Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)]

The Minister has said that the policy has not changed, but the facts on the ground have. Ordering the evacuation of 100,000 people is not a small operation; it is big one. He knows that the clear test for suspending arms sales is a clear risk of a breach of humanitarian law, but he has told the House this afternoon that he has no assurances that that breach is impossible because he has not seen a plan. Can he tell the House what advice he has given the Department for Business and Trade, and when, about its legal obligation to suspend arms sales now? Will he lay that out for us this afternoon, before he gives evidence to the Select Committee on Business and Trade on 21 May?

[Mr Mitchell]

The position on arms sales and legal advice is clear, as the right hon. Gentleman will be aware. He knows that we always follow carefully the legal advice, although we do not publish it, and we always act in accordance with it. He will also know that, in the light of that legal advice, as the Foreign Secretary announced on 9 April, the UK position with regard to export licences remains unchanged.

Israel and Gaza

Liam Byrne Excerpts

Tuesday 19th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mr Mitchell]

The right hon. Gentleman has put his finger specifically on the treatment of detainees. As he will be aware, the treatment of detainees is governed by international humanitarian law and the Geneva convention. He will have seen what the Foreign Secretary has said about the treatment of detainees, and Britain has consistently called for an inquiry, and for transparency in that inquiry, into any alleged abuses.

[Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)]

The Minister has laid great weight this afternoon on the legal and coded process that governs the export of arms, but a new international humanitarian law compliance assessment process cell has been created in his Department. Will he publish every assessment that that cell has made of Israel’s compliance with international humanitarian law, and will he tell the House whether the threshold has now been reached to review or cancel any extant open general export licence for arms sales?

Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories

Liam Byrne Excerpts

Monday 29th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mr Mitchell]

My right hon. Friend, the former Chair of the Defence Committee, is right to focus on that issue. I also spoke this morning to Sigrid Kaag, the humanitarian reconstruction co-ordinator for Gaza, and she made it clear to me that while we have zero tolerance of these dreadful things that are alleged to have been done, we cannot operate at zero risks. The politics of logistics and distribution are a nightmare in Gaza, as my right hon. Friend knows. We will look carefully at these reports, and we will suspend any future funding until we have them, but we recognise that the UNRWA assets are essential to delivering in Gaza.

[Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)]

The ICJ ruling is incredibly serious for all sides. Can the Minister tell us today whether it is His Majesty’s Government’s analysis that Israel is operating within the measures that have been set out and, crucially, what consequences there will be if there is no observance of the ICJ’s ruling? The Minister has told us for nearly 100 days now that we have been pressing for proportionate action in Gaza, but we have not got proportionate action in Gaza, so the question for the Minister must be: what are we now going to do differently to change behaviour on the ground?

[Mr Mitchell]

I do not agree with the right hon. Gentleman that we need to do things differently. We have been pressing very hard for these changes to be made. When he was in the region, my noble Friend Lord Cameron tried to advance the various issues epitomised in the five-point plan, which we are trying to drive forward. The right hon. Gentleman asks me specifically about the judgment on international humanitarian law. As I have said to the House before, we know that Israel plans to act in accordance with international humanitarian law and has the ability to do so. Clearly, these things are looked at all the time, but the judgments that we have made, which I have set out to the House in the past, remain current today.

Israel and Palestine

Liam Byrne Excerpts

Monday 11th December 2023 Westminster Hall

[Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Cat Smith) on so eloquently introducing this debate, and I, too, congratulate the petitioners on organising a petition with so much support across the country, including across my constituency. Thousands of my constituents have signed these petitions, and thousands more have written to me to express their feelings about the appalling violence they see unfolding in Gaza.

In almost every one of the getting on for 6,000 emails I have received, there has been unequivocal condemnation of the violence, attacks and brutality perpetrated by the terrorists of Hamas on 7 October: the indiscriminate slaughter of 1,200 people in Israel—it was indeed a pogrom—the rockets indiscriminately fired by Hamas; the indiscriminate hostage taking. My constituents, like the constituents of so many hon. Members here today, have watched in horror at the destruction that has now cost the lives of 18,000 people in Gaza, that has now injured 50,000 people in Gaza and that has now rendered Gaza the most dangerous place on earth to be a civilian. Some 2.2 million people are now in desperate need of food assistance.

UNRWA—the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which we helped to create all those years ago to bring respite to the people of Gaza and the west bank—now calls Gaza “hell on earth”. The World Food Programme is now very clear:

“With just a fraction of the needed food supplies coming in, a fatal absence of fuel, interruptions to communications systems and no security for our staff…we cannot do our job.”

The World Food Programme—a food programme created by the world to feed those in need—is now saying clearly to us that it can no longer do its job.

Oxfam is also now clear that the safe zones are, in its words,

“a mirage: unprotected, not agreed…beyond Gaza itself”.

It fears that people will be forced out of Gaza for the last time, and that the aid agencies will be forced into the devil’s own choice of providing aid while collaborating with that evacuation of people from Gaza.

When we have violence that extreme, surely what we should be doing across this House is arguing for a binding-on-all-sides ceasefire, arguing for peace, and arguing for negotiations. Instead, our Government went to the United Nations, days before we celebrated the anniversary of the UN declaration of human rights, and abstained on a question of moral force and justice. That motion itself was triggered by the United Nations Secretary-General—not a nobody—using emergency provisions, because he warned that the humanitarian aid system was at “risk of collapse”. That is how bad it had become.

In a situation like that, it was the wrong call to abstain on that UN Security Council vote. We should have voted for a ceasefire. We should have voted with almost every other member of the Security Council and sent a message of peace, of negotiations and of a binding-on-all-sides ceasefire, not least because such a vote would not have been without precedent.

I was a member of the Cabinet in 2009 when we voted for Security Council resolution 1860. Despite United States opposition, that called for a ceasefire in the conflict between Israel and Hamas. We must be honest; it was not immediately successful, but it changed the terms of the debate on the ground. It laid the groundwork for the peace that eventually came. That is what it means to use our weight in the international institutions of which the UK is a member to make the case for peace—to make the case for a permanent ceasefire.

I therefore hope that the Minister will be able to explain, when he rises to his feet: if not now, then when? How many more people will die before the United Kingdom does the right thing and votes for peace, votes for negotiations and, yes, votes for a ceasefire?

International Development White Paper

Liam Byrne Excerpts

Tuesday 21st November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Mitchell]

My right hon. Friend is right on that, and of course he was one of the 26 Conservative Members who voted not to cut the 0.7%. I hope that he will be energised by the alternative means we have found—the multipliers to ratchet in enormous amounts of money. He is right in what he says about the link between defence, development and diplomacy. When he gets a moment to read to read this White Paper, he will be enthused by the lines it is taking.

[Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)]

The right hon. Gentleman, my constituency neighbour, knows that I admire much about the mission he has set out in this White Paper, but chapter 3 needed to say a lot more about the money. He could have said more about doubling the fraction of the special drawing rights we share, as Japan is doing, which would have provided an extra £4 billion of development assistance. He could have said more about using the money we get back from the European Investment Bank to invest in building a bigger World Bank in order to unlock $200 billion of concessional lending over the decade ahead. He could have said more about leading a global initiative to keep the interest rate on special drawing rights down so that the International Monetary Fund remains as lender of last resort, rather than China. Those are practical steps that we could work on together—otherwise we end up with all mission and no model, which will not help the world’s poorest.

[Mr Mitchell]

If the right hon. Gentleman reads with care the chapter to which he referred, he will see that it is one of the most brilliant chapters in it—that is my biased opinion. The reason for that is that we have in Washington an extraordinary team of young and brilliant officials who have enormous influence in the World Bank, and he is a considerable expert on this area. As for the multipliers and making sure that we sweat the balance sheets of these multilateral banks to ratchet in huge amounts of more money, he will see a great deal to please him. If these reforms are implemented, as I believe they will be, driven hard by Britain through the multilateral sector, we will see a vast increase in funding. As for what he says about the SDRs, using them creatively is something we are keen to do. He will recall that at the spring meetings the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced that Britain would use its SDRs to the tune of £5.3 billion to elevate the two IMF funds that directly deal with poverty and international development.

Occupied Palestinian Territories: Humanitarian Situation

Liam Byrne Excerpts

Wednesday 8th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Roger Gale)]

Order. I indicated that I would endeavour to accommodate everybody. That remains the case. The Minister has indicated to me that he has effectively cleared his diary to accommodate this statement, because he realises how important it is. But there is a time when everything has to come to an end, because a large number of Members, particularly on the Opposition Benches, wish to speak in the King’s Speech debate and we want to get those people in as well. I will try to terminate this statement by 2.30 pm, bearing in mind that some 38 Members still wish to ask a question.

[Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)]

We are grateful to the Minister for his tireless work, but by his own analysis the aid is not getting through. I commend to him the motion passed by Birmingham City Council last night that calls for an immediate ceasefire binding on all sides, because it is the best way to save the hostages, get aid through, and let the war crimes inspectors do their work. I support that position. I do not think that he does, but could he tell us under what conditions the British Government would shift from a policy of supporting humanitarian pauses to a strategy of supporting an immediate ceasefire?

[Mr Mitchell]

I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will explain to our friends on Birmingham City Council the reason the Government and indeed his own Front Bench take the view that they do about a ceasefire, but he is right that the critical thing at the moment is to focus on the humanitarian pauses, which are designed to get food to those who need it. Nothing is more important in this context than that.