Speeches by Thornberry.

“Across the world, it is on the BBC World News channel four times a week and three times a day, where it gets a 70 million audience. On the English language World Service radio, it is on three times a day, three days a week, and gets 100 million people listening.”

“I have a constituent who was not a member of the armed forces, but a member of the secret service. He lost his job in the 1980s because he was gay. There is no compensation for him at the moment. I suspect it may not be the responsibility of my right hon. Friend, but does he not agree that there should be parity of tre…”

“Across the House we all celebrate the end of this terrible regime, but the very last thing that the Syrian people want, as my right hon. Friend said, is for one tyrant to be replaced by another, but with an Islamic flag. There is another way, but it will not be easy. I am glad to hear that my right hon. Friend has begu…”

“I thank my hon. Friend for being so clear, but can he say whether the criteria for deciding whether a British national has been arbitrarily detained will be published?”

“Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that it does not matter whether someone is a dual national or not? If they are British, they are British and they are proud to be British. We should simply talk about them being British citizens, and not even bother talking about dual nationals.”

“I thank the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) for securing today’s incredibly important debate, and the Backbench Business Committee for allowing us the time to debate it. Throughout my time in Parliament, I have seen far too many sad and desperate families protesting outside th…”

“I read with some alarm the reports about the Georgian elections, including a report by the OSCE on vote buying, multi-voting, Russian disinformation and intimidation. Is the Minister aware that the European Parliament passed a motion last Thursday stating that the elections had been neither free nor fair, and should be…”

“While Europeans spend barely the cost of two cups of coffee a week on support for the war in Ukraine, 41% of Russia’s total expenditure is spent on the war. They have had to cut social security and raise taxes to pay for the war effort. While speculation about the future of the war is understandable in the current circ…”

“During the Syrian civil war, millions of Syrians moved to Turkey and southern Lebanon, so they have already been displaced once. In Turkey, Erdoğan has been encouraging them to go home to Syria, and in southern Lebanon they have had to move back into Syria to flee from the invasion. Multiple traumas have been suffered …”

“I will also ask my right hon. Friend about Ben-Gvir and Smotrich, and perhaps if I ask in a different way, we might get an answer. Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton tells us that before the last general election, the Foreign Office was working up potential sanctions against those two most controversial and infamous settl…”

“The International Criminal Court was created when 120 countries put their names to the Rome statute and signed up to the principle that certain basic standards of behaviour must be enforced internationally, with those laws applicable to everyone, no matter who they were. From the time when Winston Churchill led the Con…”

“At this time of such great uncertainty and with so many threats, there has never been a more important time for Britain to be back on the world stage, and we have been missed. We can be a force for good, and our great friend, the sadly missed John Prescott, would be cheering the Prime Minister on as he takes a leadersh…”

“Members of my Committee and I have been meeting large numbers of European friends and neighbours, not just Ukrainians. Last week we met the Foreign Minister from Estonia, who told us that North Koreans were fighting on European soil only a few hundred kilometres from his country. Yesterday, we met Moldovan Members of P…”

“The verdicts and sentences of the 45 are, like the 2020 national security law itself and the treatment of Jimmy Lai, clear violations of the Sino-British joint declaration on Hong Kong. Following the meeting between President Xi and the Prime Minister, will my right hon. Friend please share with the House what steps th…”

“UNRWA staff are expected to uphold neutrality, and receive compulsory training on humanitarian principles. It shares staff names and ID numbers with host countries. It has its 1,300 buildings inspected quarterly, and it commissioned a report from a group led by a former Foreign Secretary of France, who concluded that U…”

“My right hon. Friend has rightly outlined the complex nature of our relationship with China. May I add to the long list the tension in the strait of Taiwan and the effect that that is likely to have on international trade if it goes wrong? The fact that the relationship is complicated, however, does not mean that we sh…”

“The new Government’s call for an immediate ceasefire in Lebanon and in Gaza is, of course, greatly welcomed. However, today we hear that one of UNIFIL’s watchtowers was bombed by the Israel Defence Forces. First, was that one of the watchtowers that we have provided? Secondly, what conversations has the Minister had wi…”

“My right hon. Friend speaks with great eloquence about how completely wrong it is for UN peacekeepers to be attacked in the way that they have been. They put their bodies on the line, keeping warring parties apart, and they were able to maintain peace—a rough peace— on the blue line for nearly 18 years before the confl…”

“On this anniversary, the House unites in its condemnation of the murder of more than 1,000 Israeli citizens and makes a united call for the release of 100 hostages. Parliament also stands behind a belief in the rules-based international order—a belief that all civilian life is equal and must be protected. Today, we mar…”

“In a parallel reality, may I ask the Foreign Secretary about a particular aspect of the treaty that I do not believe will get a great deal of attention in all the heat and fury, but that is very important? At a time when our oceans have never been under such stress, the British Indian Ocean Territory is one of the last…”