May I start by warmly congratulating the new Deirdre Costigan? For a time I lived in Acton, close to her constituency, and when she spoke about the diversity and warmth of the area, I certainly recognised that. I have no doubt that she will be an enormous asset to this place. Many congratulations, and welcome.

I also welcome the Secretary of State for Defence and his team to their places, and the Foreign Secretary and his team to theirs. They include my fellow Oxford MP, the Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, Anneliese Dodds; it is wonderful to see her there. I also welcome the shadow Defence Secretary, James Cartlidge, and, in particular, the shadow Foreign Secretary, Mr Mitchell, whose promotion I hope we can all agree is long overdue.

Under boundary changes, Oxford West and Abingdon has taken in Dalton barracks and Shippon, so I am now also the MP for a number of armed forces families. I pay tribute to them, and to all our armed forces and their families who so willingly give their lives over to service to this country.

I am very pleased that foreign affairs and defence has been chosen as the theme for the second day of the debate. We are living in a world that feels so much less stable and less secure than it has ever felt, certainly in my lifetime. Only a few days ago, we saw the horrific attempted assassination of an American presidential candidate; Putin continues to wage war in Ukraine; Xi Jinping continues his muscular foreign policy aims, threatening Taiwan and continuing to oppress people in Hong Kong and Xinjiang; and as has been mentioned, a rising tide of populism is sweeping across Europe.

The Liberal Democrats support many of the priorities set out in the King’s Speech. Support for NATO, support for Ukraine and resetting our relationship with the European Union are all vital to achieving security and stability. We aim to work constructively with anyone in government who seeks to return Britain to its position as a leading light on the international stage, in particular in the area of development, on which I associate my remarks with those of the shadow Foreign Secretary. We agree that there is a huge opportunity. We want a return to spending 0.7% on development, and we think that a new Department is the way to ensure the muscle that is needed to give that oomph. Nevertheless, we wish all the Ministers well in their endeavour to find a place for development in the Foreign Office.

I was especially pleased to hear mention of the middle east and the two-state solution. For reasons that I am sure are obvious, that is what I will focus my remarks on. It has been nearly 300 days since the horrific Hamas attack on 7 October. Since then, hostages have still not returned home. The death toll in Gaza has reached 38,000. The vast majority of the dead are women and children. There are, of course, thousands more under the rubble who are left out of the statistics. Scientists fear that the death toll will soar. A letter in the medical journal The Lancet predicted that if we take into account indirect casualties of war—people who die of malnutrition, a lack of medication and unsanitary living conditions—the total number of deaths could climb as high as 186,000.

The children of Gaza have suffered the unimaginable. Alexandra Saieh, the head of humanitarian policy and advocacy at Save the Children International, said:

“They are being dismembered. They have been burnt alive in tents. They have been killed due to crashing apartment building blocks. They have been also killed by preventable diseases and illnesses and denied medical assistance. Children in Gaza are just suffering horrifically.”

In the first three months of this conflict alone, 1,000 children had one or both legs amputated; that meant more than 10 children lost one or both legs every single day. We need that immediate ceasefire. We needed it six months ago.

There is only one way to end the killing, to get those hostages safely home and to get that humanitarian aid in. None of that can happen until the ceasefire is achieved, but we must also understand that a ceasefire is not enough for peace. Peace is not just the absence of war. It is hope that is shared—hope for a future in which Palestinians and Israelis live in security and dignity. That is what we mean by a two-state solution. That is the real prize.

I have been relieved to be a Liberal Democrat during the last few months. In all seriousness, when my family were under siege in that church in Gaza, the professional and the personal collided completely. I got the devastating news in November that I had lost a family member; my cousins texted me to tell me, and all they asked for was that ceasefire. That is what the Liberal Democrats have consistently argued for, because when it comes to foreign policy, we ground our approach in liberal principles of human rights and the international rules-based order.