The Scottish National party will push for another vote on a Gaza ceasefire this week, creating a fresh challenge for the speaker, Lindsay Hoyle, and the Labour party after last Wednesday’s chaotic scenes in the Commons.
Hoyle faced calls to quit after his decision to break with precedent and allow Labour to table a vote during an SNP debate calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, which prompted a walkout by Conservative and Scottish Nationalist MPs.
Announcing the move, the SNP’s Westminster leader, Stephen Flynn, said he wanted to “refocus the discussion away from the Westminster circus and on to what really matters – doing everything we can to secure an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and Israel”.
After criticism that that original motion amounted to posturing, with the voting preference of UK MPs unlikely to make a substantive difference to ending the conflict, Flynn said he would be pressing the UK parliament to “back concrete actions to actually achieve an immediate ceasefire”.
These actions may include demands for the UK to employ diplomatic pressure, including using its position on the UN security council to back a ceasefire rather than – as it has previously done – abstaining on votes.
And the motion may also include the demand for arms sales to Israel to be frozen, something that other parties are unlikely to support and raising the prospect of a further Labour split over the issue.
It proposes the halt of all transfers of military equipment and technology, including components, to Israel, and the suspension of issuing new licences.
The SNP has written to all the party leaders to discuss the contents of the motion.
Flynn said: “We are keen to build as much consensus as possible, while recognising the need to substantially shift the dial on the positions of Sunak and Starmer, who have been too timid in their approach to securing an immediate ceasefire - and not forgetting the success the SNP has had in changing the terms of the debate by doggedly sticking by our principles and values.”
Last Thursday Hoyle offered the SNP an emergency debate under standing order 24, which is used a handful of times a year and normally with a motion in neutral terms that does not bind the government, meaning his treatment of the SNP’s motion will come under intense scrutiny.
In 2019, during the parliamentary clashes over Brexit, the former speaker John Bercow caused a row by allowing an emergency debate on a substantive motion, in effect allowing MPs to take charge of the Commons timetable.
The SNP said it would publish the details of the motion, with concrete actions, on Monday after discussions with the speaker on the specific terms of a debate and vote.
The move comes as SNP leader and Scotland’s first minister Humza Yousaf called on the UK government to stop arming Israel.
In an interview Middle East Eye, Yousaf said: “I cannot see the justification for arming the Israeli government given some of the devastation that we’ve seen”.
“I think that the UK Government needs to stop arming Israel. I cannot be clearer about that given some of the atrocious scenes that we have seen that are undoubtedly breaches of humanitarian law”.
