Wes Streeting

The context of that exchange with Peter Mandelson and my friend Pat McFadden was I had received... Well, I'd had an in-person meeting, but I'd also received a document, a dossier, of eyewitness testimony of British doctors in Gaza.

Not activists...

not people with a political agenda, people simply with a desire to save life and a humanitarian agenda.

And what I heard firsthand and what I saw in the documentary evidence was serious and substantial charges of war crimes and a level of civilian suffering, which I thought was unconscionable.

Do you think there's been a genocide?

I wouldn't use that term and I would also reject the term genocide being used as some sort of ideological litmus test about whether you care about the lives of Palestinian people and kids.

I think that the lives of Israelis and Palestinians are of equal worth and value.

And that has always been my view.

And I've always been someone who... It's Gaza that was pounded for the first part of two years.

Well, exactly.

And I have spent time with survivors of October the 7th.

And I have spent time with survivors of the onslaught in Gaza too.

And I've spent time with those British doctors.

And at the time, I and other cabinet colleagues were trying to get the government to recognise the state of Palestine and to take a tougher line on Israel's actions.

And I think potentially war crimes that they were committing.

And what you saw from Peter Mandelson...

reflected the brick wall that i was greeted with from far too many people in the government and when i sent that dossier around my cabinet colleagues as i promised the doctors that i would do so that people at senior levels of the government would know what they saw and we could respond appropriately as a government my motives were questioned

And impugned, and I was basically treated like a troublemaker, rather than someone who was this country's health secretary, with an actual responsibility for global health too, but speaking up on behalf of and for British medics in Gaza.

And what you saw from Peter Mandelson reflected the brick wall that I and other members of the Cabinet were up against.

When I sent that dossier around, the Prime Minister accused me of sending around a document that was designed to be leaked.