Sunak says ‘all sides should show restraint’ after Iranian attack on Israel – UK politics live | Politics

George Galloway was wrong when he said that Keir Starmer had not condemnned the Israeli attack on the Iranian consultate in Syria. (See 4.17pm.) Starmer did allude to this in his response to Rishi Sunak, telling MPs:

We must proceed calmly, carefully and with restraint. Because if diplomacy takes centre stage, and it must, then we also need to be clear, diplomatic premises should not be targeted and attacked, that is a point of principle.

Given that Starmer has been reluctant to criticise Israel during the war, this is worth noting. Here’s a comment from Paul Waugh, the political commentator who came close to being selected as Labour’s candidate for Rochdale ahead of the recent byelection.

Significant. @Keir_Starmer on Iran/Israel: “If diplomacy takes centre stage, and it must, then we also need to be clear diplomatic premises should not be targeted and attacked. That is a point of principle.”
Clear signal Israel was wrong to bomb Iranian. consulate in Damascus

George Galloway, the Workers Party of Britain, criticises Sunak for not condemning the Israeli destruction of the Iranian embassy in Damascus in his statement. And he says Keir Starmer did not raise this point either. He says Kay Burley on Sky News is the only person to have raised this with a government minister. (See 12.07pm.)

Sunak criticises Galloway for not condeming the Iranian attack. And he says there is “no equivalence … whatsoever” between what Israel did and what Iran did and “to suggest otherwise it’s simply wrong”.

Mhairi Black, the SNP’s deputy leader at Westminster, starts by condemning the acts of violence perpetrated by Iran.

But she says if acts of violence by Iran are to be condemned, acts of violence by Israel should be condemned too. And she says that, if sending hundreds of missiles and drones was disproportionate as a response to “an isolated attack on an embassy”, then what is happening in Gaza is also disproportionate as a response to the Hamas attack of 7 October.

In response, Sunak said it was wrong to imply an “equivalence” between Iran and Israel.

Rishi Sunak is making a statement to MPs on Iran and Israel.

Here is the short statement Sunak issued on Saturday.

He starts by saying the scale of the attack, and the fact it was directed at Israel, made it unprecedented.

But the attack did not succeed. He says the UK “joined a US-led international effort, along with France and partners in the region, which intercepted almost all of the missiles saving lives in Israel and its neighbours”.

British pilots “put themselves in harm’s way to protect the innocent” and to preserv peace, he says.

Sunak says the UK is urging Israel to show restraint.

We are working urgently with our allies to de escalate the situation and prevent further bloodshed. We want to see calmer heads prevail.

Sunak says he will be speaking to Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, to express solidarity and to discuss how we can prevent further escalation. He goes on: “All sides must show restraint.”

He says there are three priorities going ahead: upholding regional security, pursuing the two-state solution, and increasing the supply of aid to people in Gaza.

Vaughan Gething, the new first minister of Wales, has defended funding cuts that could lead to the closure of Cardiff’s national museum and the loss of up to 90 jobs, PA Media reports.

Gething was speaking at his first press conference since becoming first minister, which was held at Coleg Gwent’s campus in Ebbw Vale on Monday. During a speech to engineers, Gething described how his priorities were the NHS, steelworkers and farming – issues he said needed “urgent attention”.

He said his cabinet would have a “relentless focus on a core set of priorities” that mattered to Welsh people, with the NHS at the top of the list.

During questioning from journalists, Gething was asked about comments by Jane Richardson, the chief executive of Museum Wales, who warned that the National Museum Cardiff could close and up to 90 jobs could be lost following cuts. He replied:

I think this neatly highlights when we’re talking about priorities and the reality of our budgets after more than a decade of austerity.

When we set out in our budget our priorities, that we’d prioritise health and social care, and local government, that meant there were much more difficult choices to make across the range of the government …

If the NHS really is our priority, and we’re going to invest in it, you can’t have that as a consequence free for every other area of public life.

We’ve set out that there would be reductions in some areas, and that’s painful and difficult. The museum is just one of those, there are many, many others.

I don’t celebrate having to make those choices but I can’t be honest with the people of Wales about having priorities if we aren’t prepared to make choices around those.

It really does highlight the need to have a different settlement at a UK level.

On Sunday, Richardson told BBC Radio Wales’ Sunday Supplement programme that Museum Wales is facing a £4.5m reduction in its budget. She said National Museum Cardiff – one of seven sites managed by the organisation – could be forced to close if more funding could not be secured.

As PA reports, Museum Wales has had a £3m reduction in its grant but has a year-on-year deficit of £1.5m, meaning a total deficit of £4.5m by the end of March.

Rishi Sunak has repeatedly said that, once the Rwanda bill becomes law, he expects the first deportation flights to the country to leave in the spring. But the Times this morning is reporting that the Home Office is now expecting the first flights to leave “by early June”, which most people would describe as summer, not spring.

At the No 10 lobby briefing this morning, when asked if the timetable was slipping, the prime minister’s spokesperson said:

Our commitment remains to get flights off as soon as possible, and that has not changed.

But the spokesperson declined invitations to say the flights could be leaving in the spring.

MPs will vote tonight on the latest Lords amendments to the safety of Rwanda (asylum and immigration) bill. If the first strike in the “ping pong” process comes when the Commons first votes to remove Lords amendemnts, and sends a bill back along the corridor to the upper chamber, tonight will be strike three. On 18 March MPs voted down the original 10 Lords amendments. On 20 March peers voted, in effect, to put seven of them back in.

Tonight MPs are expected to vote for government amendments removing six of them. For technical reasons, the government cannot just vote down the final one (exempting victims of modern slavery from deportation to Rwanda) without collapsing the bill under the double insistence rule, and instead it has tabled an alternative amendment proposing an annual report into how the Act affects modern slavery victims. In the Lords this is likely to be viewed as a very minimal, and largely cosmetic, concession.

The government does not seem minded to offer more, meaningful concessions to peers. At the No 10 lobby briefing the PM’s spokesperson told journalists:

We’ve always been clear that the bill, as previously through the House of Commons, is the right bill to get flights off the ground.

Asked if Rishi Sunak had a message for peers, the spokesperson said:

This week parliament has the opportunity to pass a bill that will save the lives of those being exploited by people-smuggling gangs.

It is clear that we cannot continue with the status quo which is unfair and uncompassionate. Now is the time to change the equation against gangs and unite behind the bills.

After tonight the bill will return to the Lords tomorrow. It is expected that at that point peers will again vote down the government amendments, and vote again to insert a handful of extra safeguards into the legislation, but the “ping pong” process is expected to end on Wednesday, with peers ultimately accepting the will of the elected chamber, which is what almost always happens on these occasions.

In his interviews this morning David Cameron, the foreign secretary, indicated that, if Israel retaliates against Iran for the attack on Saturday night, the UK won’t offer military support. He told the Today programme:

We are saying very clearly we don’t support a retaliatory strike. We don’t think they should make one.

But Cameron did not rule out Britain offering further defensive support to Israel in the event of retaliation leading to another attack by Iran. He said:

If they [the Israelis] come under attack, that’s a different issue.

But what we are saying very clearly to the Israelis is ‘we respect your right to take action, you are an independent, sovereign country, you’ve suffered what could have been a calamitous attack, you’ve bravely fought it off, you’ve had a success, Iran has had a failure, the right thing to do, the tough thing to do now is not to escalate further but to switch the focus back on to getting the hostages home’.