Labour MP breaks down in tears in Parliament over her friend Jo Cox during Syria debate as she urges UK to do more to help end crisis

A LABOUR MP has broken down in tears in Parliament during a debate on Syria over her slain colleague Jo Cox, saying “she would have known what was needed”.

Alison McGovern spoke during the emergency debate on the humanitarian crisis in Aleppo, where hundreds of civilians have been killed.

The MP for Wirral South paid tribute to the White Helmets, Syria's volunteer rescue workers, and urged people to donate to help them continue their work.

And in an impassioned plea for the UK to do more to help the people suffering in the besieged city, she urged for a no-fly zone to be established as soon as possible.

Ms McGovern also paid tribute to her friend Ms Cox, the Batley and Spen MP who was killed while attending a constituency surgery in June, who had worked tirelessly to help out the Syrian crisis.

The tearful MP said: “I cannot help noting in that serving as co-chair of the Friends of Syria group, I am taking up the role of my friend Jo Cox.

“She would have been here, and she would have known what was needed.”

She added: “And most of all she would have said that we should help refugees fleeing Syria - not just 20,000 by 2020, but many more much more quickly.”

The MP urged people not to turn their backs on the suffering, which has seen the Russian-backed President Bashar Al-Assad take on the country’s rebels with a brutal bombing campaign.

Comparing the current situation to the one faced by the Spanish Brigades during that country’s civil war, she said: “In Syria the world is confronted by the unspeakable evil and unimaginable suffering.

“Some of us might have hoped that the advent of social media and new means of technology might have opened eyes more than in the 1930s.

“But the pictures make us want to turn our eyes away from the horror.

“But we cannot un-see what we have seen and we must not turn our backs on the greatest crime of our century.

“The people of Syria are suffering let us do everything we can to help.”

It comes as another MP likened Russia’s actions in Syria to the Nazi attacks in Spain.

Former Cabinet Minister Andrew Mitchell accused Putin’s regime of being “barbaric” and committing a war crime by attacking an UN aid convoy last month.

He added: "We should single Russia out like a pariah. The Kremlin, like any bully, is winning credibility if no-one stands up to them."

Mr Mitchell also said: "What Russia are doing to the United Nations is precisely what Italy and Germany did to the League of Nations in the 1930s.

“And they are doing to Aleppo precisely what the Nazis did to Guernica in the Spanish Civil War."

Russia has always said its air support for Assad has been about targeting terrorist, but the French Government has also indicated it believes the country had committed war crimes in Aleppo.

Mr Mitchell, who led the debate after asking for it to be granted, said British aircraft could form part of an international coalition to enforce a no-fly zone

“This is not about attacking Russia,” he told the Commons. “It's about defending innocent civilians.

"This is humanitarian work and protection from a barbarism we thought we had confined to the last century."

He added that western countries must not be "cowed" and "pole-axed" into not taking a stronger role in Syria by experiences in countries like Iraq, and argued the UK should "take a lead" in looking at "every possible way" of ending the bloodshed.