It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Walker. I thank all colleagues who have taken part in this debate, as well as my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully) for opening it. Like everyone else, I also thank those who have worked so hard to raise the petition. I think we would all say that the fact that so few colleagues are here does not reflect the level of interest in the House; this debate has landed on a particularly busy day in the House. I venture to suggest that almost every single Member of the House of Commons would have wanted to listen to the speeches made today, and probably to make one themselves. Those who have done so much work to raise the petition should not doubt that they have done a great job. The way in which the House has conducted itself in this debate and the speeches that have been made reflect colleagues’ concern.
The hon. Member for Leeds North East (Fabian Hamilton), who spoke for the Opposition, did my job in running through the speeches. I thank him; I will not repeat the process because he summarised extremely well what colleagues said. I am coming to the substance of the debate, but I take issue with the statements about the intervention in Libya and the aftermath. I was there; I was the Minister responsible at the time. The hon. Gentleman praised Peter Millett; I know how hard diplomats worked in the immediate aftermath of the events that removed Gaddafi. There were elections. We worked to create a civil administration out of nothing, because Gaddafi had left nothing. There was an absolute commitment by those in Libya. They wanted no boots on the ground. There was a limit to what they wanted from the outside world. We tried. The circumstances are clear now: the efforts were not successful, despite all the work that was put in.
There was no abandonment of Libya, but the depth of the damage done by 40 years of Gaddafi and the failure to create any institutions left a bigger hole than probably anyone understood at the time. There were a series of consequences, for which it is impossible to pin blame purely and simply, beyond on those who created the misery in the first place and who were overthrown. That is of only partial consequence now. What is important is to deal with what is happening at present, and that has been the substance of the debate.