Government publishes Syria motion

In the past few minutes, the government has published the following motion on action in Syria, which you can read below. The Leader of the House Chris Grayling has announced a change to the Commons business which will see PMQs cancelled and this motion debated for 10 hours.

The Cabinet today held what the Prime Minister’s official spokeswoman described as a ‘very serious’ discussion, with 20 frontbenchers speaking in favour of the motion. Significantly, when asked whether those present had discussed the question of who the 70,000 moderate opposition forces are, the spokeswoman said ‘that was not a focus of the discussion’, adding ‘it was not a point that was debated or discussed by the Cabinet’.

The spokeswoman argued that the Prime Minister was giving plenty of time for debate, pointing out that Parliament had debated the Falklands War for 2 hours 45 minutes.