Iran

Debate between Tom Hayes and Brian Leishman

Wednesday 15th July 2026 Commons Chamber

[Brian Leishman]

Trump is absolutely throwing his weight, his heft and his influence politically and militarily across various parts of the globe. His behaviour is in contravention of international law. It is heinous in the extreme, and he is a danger to—to use a broad phrase—world peace. There is no doubt about that. However, Ukraine and other parts of the world, such as Kashmir, are very much on the brink. We have seen mass displacement and ethnic cleansing of millions. We have seen—I may be wrong, and pardon me if I am—the biggest humanitarian disaster in Sudan. When we amalgamate all those crises in various bits of the world, we see that the world is on the brink—it is on a precipice.

I have often quoted the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in this place, and it says:

“It is now 85 seconds to midnight.”

That is the closest the world has ever been to annihilation. A lot of that is down to environmental aspects, but it is also down to politics, politicians and the political decisions that are made in various parts of the globe. I would like to think that there would be the international leadership to say, “No.” The right hon. Gentleman is well aware of my position on military spending: I think we have higher priorities than that because our nation has crumbling infrastructure, some 3.5 million people and rising using food banks, and 14% of children living in food insecurity. Those are the issues in my inbox and those are the things that I want to tackle.

[Tom Hayes (Bournemouth East) (Lab)]

Building on the intervention by the right hon. Member for Wetherby and Easingwold (Sir Alec Shelbrooke), is the issue not as simple as this: in recent years, although Presidents have called on European Union countries and Britain to spend more on defence, we have not done so because America would fund the defence of the western world? President Trump is refusing to do that and is willing to look to other parts of the world to meet America’s strategic interests, and as a consequence, European countries are stepping up. Missing in this debate is the realisation by the Americans of what they gain by making a fair contribution to the defence of the west: they are not just burning their bridges with their allies, but harming their own defence. We ought to be emphasising that we will invest in our defence, but also that we will call out American behaviour where it is harming alliances and endangering US security.

[Brian Leishman]

My hon. Friend touches on something that I want to expand on further: spending for defence is not limited to weapons, drones and so on. I regret that my Labour Government have cut overseas development aid, which is an echo of what Donald Trump did with the US Agency for International Development package. Even the most marginal, minute bit of analysis appreciates that overseas development aid is an investment in more dangerous, volatile parts of the world to combat another hot political topic in this country at the moment: immigration. There is more than one way to spend to secure our borders.

The UK must join the moral and principled calls for an immediate and lasting ceasefire, to be followed by a swift resumption of negotiations. We must also openly denounce and separate ourselves from the Trump Administration’s dangerous and hypocritical tactics, specifically Trump’s willingness to initiate and pursue illegal wars while claiming to negotiate. Above all, we must keep it in our minds that the vast majority of Iranian people desire peace and wish to rebuild their shattered country.

This devastating war has set back the vital efforts of and the painstaking progress made by civil society and trade union activists, who have been valiantly struggling to achieve genuine freedom and social justice and to steer Iran towards a democratic, popular, fair and progressive transition. The future of Iran remains the sole preserve and remit of the long-suffering and long-struggling people of Iran themselves—and absolutely only them.