It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Stringer. I thank the hon. Member for Hyndburn (Sarah Smith) for securing this important debate.
There is no period of greater importance than childhood. Every child deserves dignity, protection and the support needed to give them the best possible start in life. Yet today, more than 500 million children are living in active conflict zones around the world. Every day, we are confronted with the human cost of war on children: the 20,000 Ukrainian children abducted and taken to Belarus and Russia, many of whom may never see their families again; the 10.8 million children in Yemen denied food, clean water, healthcare and education; and the millions of girls in Sudan facing displacement, starvation and the constant threat of abduction, exploitation and enslavement.
The scale of trauma being inflicted on children worldwide is both incomprehensible and intolerable. Ending this suffering requires two things from a Government such as ours—adequate humanitarian and development assistance to meet children’s immediate needs, and the political courage to prioritise human rights and the prevention of harm over political expediency. On both counts, unfortunately, this Government have failed, in my view. At a time when children’s suffering has never been more widespread, the Government chose to halve the overseas aid budget. That was not an unavoidable necessity, but a political choice, and one that has stripped millions of children of access to food, healthcare, education and protection. Now is not the time for retreat; it is a time for leadership. Instead, the Government have turned away from their responsibility to uphold the most basic human dignities.
However, this failure goes beyond aid. The Government have also failed to take the political action necessary to prevent and halt the conflicts that devastate children’s lives in the first place. Nowhere—nowhere—is that more evident than in Gaza. For over a year, this Labour Government stood by as Palestinian children were bombed, shot and starved, and as their schools, hospitals and homes were destroyed. Through their inaction, the Government have been complicit in the destruction of the conditions children need to live, learn and grow. They stood by as their lives were reduced to bare survival, or taken away altogether.