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THE PARLIAMENTARY REVIEW Highlighting best practice 60 | REVIEW OF PARLIAMENT David Cameron was immediately challenged by the Labour leader Ed Miliband, to confirm that he would not bypass the will of the Commons by using his powers as Prime Minister to commit UK forces without a further vote. Mr Cameron told him, flatly, 'I can give that assurance … It is very clear tonight that, while the house has not passed a motion, the British parliament, reflecting the views of the British people, does not want to see British military action. I get that, and the government will act accordingly.' The vote had been forced by a backbench debate in the Commons on 11 July, which ended with a 114 to 1 vote approving a resolution requiring that 'no lethal support should be provided to anti-government forces in Syria without the explicit prior consent of parliament'. So, when evidence emerged that sarin gas was being used by the Assad regime against the rebels in Syria, David Cameron recalled parliament. In the eight hours of debate that followed, it was obvious that the bitter arguments over Iraq a decade ago still reverberated, with talk of brutal dictators and humanitarian disasters. Mr Cameron recalled sitting in the chamber in 2003 as a young backbencher, listening to Tony Blair argue for Britain to take part in the invasion of Iraq – he was keen to draw a distinction. There was no doubt, he said, that the Assad regime had committed at terrible atrocity, and his voice cracked as he described the chemical attack near Damascus on 21 August: 'The video footage illustrates some of the most sickening human suffering imaginable. Expert video analysis can find no way that this wide array of footage could have been fabricated, particularly the behaviour of small children in those shocking videos.' The government had worked hard to draw up a motion acceptable to Labour, but in the end faced a Labour amendment calling for more evidence that the Syrian regime was responsible for the gas attack, and for what Ed Miliband called a 'legitimate road map' to a decision to be set out. Mr Miliband stressed: 'I am not with those who rule out action.' And he rejected accusations that he was playing the issue for party advantage. When the debate moved to backbench MPs, Jack Straw, who was the foreign secretary when Tony Blair's government took Britain into Iraq, said the public was now much more sceptical. And he warned that the UK would inevitably be taking sides in the Syrian conflict. Other backbenchers reflected the doubts and fears that surrounded the prospect of another intervention in the Middle East; the Conservative former defence secretary Liam Fox said that doing nothing would be appeasement. A Labour shadow minister, Jim Fitzpatrick, had resigned rather than support even the cautious amendment put down by his leader. The former Lib Dem leader Sir Menzies Campbell wondered what the West would do about atrocities committed using conventional weapons. The Green MP Caroline Lucas warned that intervention Backbenchers reflected the doubts and fears that surrounded the prospect of another intervention in the Middle East