David Lammy, Lord Chancellor, Secretary of State for Justice and Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, hailing the UN Charter as “our compass”, stressed that “what is happening in Gaza is indefensible”, inhumane, utterly unjustifiable and “must end now”.  The people of Palestine “whose State we proudly recognized this week” and the people of Israel “deserve better”.  Condemning the “horrific acts by Hamas” on 7 October 2023 and “Israel’s denial of life saving humanitarian aid and the catastrophic famine that it has caused”, he stressed “there can be no answer to these horrors but concerted diplomatic action”.

He further voiced support for Ukraine, which must emerge from the Russian Federation’s “brutal war as a sovereign, secure and independent nation”.  President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has shown commitment to peace at every turn, while President Vladimir Putin “savagely rains down ever more missiles and drones on the Ukrainian people”.  Affirming that the United Kingdom will stand with Ukraine “today, tomorrow and 100 years from now”, he also voiced support for “the people of Sudan”, with millions displaced by conflict and more facing famine — who “need the international community to come together to make renewed efforts to achieve peace and allow aid to reach those who desperately need it now”.

Turning to “a bracing new era of promise, power and potential”, he called AI “a lightning strike of change” which leading scientists “think could only be compared to the industrial revolution compressed into a decade”.  Embracing AI will build better businesses, and fight crime better by spotting fraud “in real time”.  The technology is already saving lives, he noted — “the defining opportunity of our generation, and we must run towards it with hope”.  However, he also warned of its power to spread disinformation and empower criminals — with authoritarian States, notably the Russian Federation, manipulating large-scale language models to spread propaganda, while organized crime is using AI to “supercharge their scams deceiving victims on an unprecedented scale”.  AI “can empower freedom or it can entrench oppression”, he stressed — and only cooperation can set it on the right millennium-defining course.