Gaza: Humanitarian Aid

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Wednesday 4th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

I was in Ramallah in the West Bank myself a couple of weeks ago and I spoke to families who have been forced to move. It is right that we are reminded that we cannot just separate what is happening in Gaza and in the West Bank. It is the same Government undertaking all of this. What struck me, from the conversations I had, was the level of fear that there is in all communities in Israel and the West Bank. It is important that, inasmuch as we can, the UK uses its ability to influence, to try to work alongside the US, Egypt and Qatar to try to get some kind of negotiated settlement here so that there can be a ceasefire, the hostages can be released and we can get the aid where it is needed.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords, as usual, these exchanges are, rightly, reasonably calm and measured but they do not get close to the horrors that we see on our television screens, on news bulletins, night after night, with one horror overtaking another—the latest, of course, seeing starving people herded into the south of Israel and food supplies being used as a weapon of war. One report last week encapsulated it all: a mother, a doctor at a hospital in the south of Gaza, losing nine of her 10 children in an air strike. They were aged from six months to 10 years. I do not know what the right language is to describe this, whether it is carpet bombing, genocide or whatever, but I do know that it is evil—and I would love to hear my noble friend and my Government describe it in precisely those terms.

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

If I am learning one thing about this job, it is that you can use whatever words and make whatever statements you like, and it has some effect—it is galvanising and it is important that the people of our country know where their Government stand and that we work with our partners and allies internationally to make clear the position of the United Kingdom—but what happens next lies squarely in the hands of quite a small group of people in the Israeli Government. I would have hoped that the statements that have been made and the information we now have coming out of Gaza would have led to a change in position, because the scheme they have come up with is clearly failing. It is going to lead to more death, starvation and desperation in that community and, ultimately, more violence. We need to get everybody we can around a table so that the dialogue can begin again and we can get the cease- fire that we so desperately want to see.