Cameron had apparently been getting everything in place for this and had been ready and waiting.
On the news Starmer said they are ‘looking into it’.
Also MP John McDonnell spoke in Parliament the other day about repeated plans for rescuing children from Gaza for treatment in the U.K. being ignored even though medics have agreed. What’s going on?
Read below:
“I want to raise again the issue of the evacuation of seriously injured children from Gaza. When the Ukraine war started, we very rapidly put in place a mechanism for the evacuation of injured children from Ukraine to hospitals here, to ensure that they had the appropriate treatment. It was a system that seemed to have worked effectively. Soon after the attack on Gaza, my friend Kate Hollern, who was the hon. Member for Blackburn, raised in this House the issue of trying to instigate a similar scheme for Palestinian children. I think she did that around November or December, but we heard nothing back. I raised the issue again on the Floor of the House with the then deputy Foreign Secretary—the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell)—and we were given an assurance. I had met with the voluntary organisation Save Gaza’s Children, which is based in France, and there is also Save A Child, which was doing work at that point to evacuate children to Italy and to other countries surrounding Palestine.”
“I raised the issue again in May because we had no response. Then the general election happened so I wrote to the Prime Minister, because I felt this needed a prime ministerial push to get it through. I raised it with the Foreign Secretary because we needed to ensure that our diplomatic efforts were involved, and I wrote to the Home Secretary as well because we needed the visa arrangements put in place. I never received a response.”
“I wrote again in August to the Minister for Development, my right hon. Friend the Member for Oxford East (Anneliese Dodds), and I did receive a response. However, it was not about the evacuation but the assistance being provided to organisations hopefully working as best they could within Gaza. So I wrote again, and I have not received a second response. I am not sure what is happening in Government on this. I understand that a new Government have come in and it is difficult settling down and sorting out arrangements, but this is a matter of urgency.”
“We have had further reports this morning of another hospital being attacked, and we have also heard reports of the doctors being threatened that if they did not evacuate they would be arrested. We have even had ambulance workers arrested this morning as well. They are being forced to choose between evacuating children from intensive care, which is risky, or leaving them behind, and as a result some doctors are risking their lives.”
“We could do exactly as we have done with Ukraine, by simply establishing a system to ensure that those seriously injured children are evacuated. Clinicians are willing to assist here; in fact, I have had clinicians contact me to say, “What can we do?” and “How can we assist?” I ask the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Lincoln (Hamish Falconer), to take this and come back as a matter of urgency. Children are dying as a result and we cannot stand to one side.”
parallelparliament.co.uk/mp/john-mcdonnell/debate/2024-10-10/commons/westminster-hall/gaza-and-humanitarian-aid