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Burma

I have no quarrel with the Secretary of State on any of that except that I express the concern that there are members of the Security Council who view the Security Council in a way that will limit its role in the future. It is the only international institution of its kind that we have, and we will have to return to how we ensure that the UN functions effectively and properly. All sorts of bits of reparation and repair work might have to be done. The whole matter of the UK, the US, the Iraq invasion and the coalition of the willing has done some damage, but, bluntly, the truth is that the Security Council, through no fault of the UK and its chairmanship, has not stepped up to the mark in this crisis in the way that one would have hoped and expected. It is as simple as that. I am conscious that many hon. Members wish to speak, not least the Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, who I am sure will add to comments about the responsibility to protect, and I am glad that the House has had the opportunity to debate the issue in the main Chamber in prime time. I hope that the Secretary of State will undertake to update the House regularly, because—I entirely endorse and echo what the right hon. Member for Leeds, West (John Battle) said—this will be a long-running tragedy that will need an enormous amount of international effort. We all know that one of the real tragedies of such events is that they understandably endure for a period of time on the television screens and news broadcasts, and then they are simply forgotten, and large numbers of people feel forgotten and abandoned. We should, if we do nothing else during the course of the debate, make it clear to the people of Burma that they will be neither forgotten nor abandoned.