MPs overwhelmingly back Libya operations

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MPs have voted 557 to 13 in favour of UK military operations in Libya.

50 backbench members were able to express their views during the debate on the UN security council resolution authorising action against the Gaddafi regime to protect civilians.

At the end of the debate foreign secretary William Hague said there had been "nothing gleeful or gung-ho about the atmosphere of the House or the decisions of the government".

He argued "it is right to act" to prevent Gaddafi's forces massacring civilians, but that action had not been "automatic or unthinking".

He said the UK had to become involved because it is a permanent member of the UN security council with the military capability to act swiftly.

Indeed he said if this country had not involved itself the UN resolution would not have happened at all.

He said military action was the only way the Libyan people would be able to stand up to the regime without being killed.

Shadow foreign secretary Douglas Alexander said the UK has a moral duty to act, and the Labour party believes multi-lateral action should be used to save lives.

He said the UK must be unequivocal in its condemnation of violence in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, and those governments must know that a security response "cannot be an alternative to political reform".

At the start of the debate prime minister David Cameron said that coalition forces enforcing UN Security Council resolution 1973 had "largely neutralised Libyan air defences" and as a result a no-fly zone had "effectively been put in place over Libya".

"It is also clear that coalition forces have helped to avert what could have been a bloody massacre in Benghazi. In my view they did so just in the nick of time," he said.

And he rejected the suggestion from one backbench MP that the West should have waited until Arab planes could be in the air before it intervened.

"If we had waited for that, Benghazi would have fallen and, from that, probably Tobruk would have fallen and Gaddafi would have rolled up the whole of his country in the next 24 to 48 hours," Cameron said.

He added: "There was an urgent need to stop the slaughter."

But the prime minister said the intervention in Libya was "different from Iraq".

"This is about protecting people and giving the Libyan people a chance to shape their own destiny," he said.