David Davis, Theresa May’s most dovish cabinet minister, has said he has been given reassurance over the doubts about military action in Syria that led him to vote against David Cameron’s proposals in 2013.

On Thursday, May was also given the backing of her most influential foreign policy backbencher, Tom Tugendhat, to take part in any western strike against Syria without a Commons mandate.

Cabinet ministers returned to London from the Easter break for a meeting on Thursday afternoon that is widely expected to sign off British involvement in any attack.

Davis told a Wall Street Journal conference in London that he had not previously been convinced that the Syrian regime was behind the 2013 chemical weapons attack in Ghouta, which provoked the vote in parliament on taking action against the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad. Cameron lost the vote after a number of Tories rebelled and Labour MPs opposed action.

The Brexit secretary said he had also been concerned about the lack of a detailed plan for what would happen after intervention, but said he had been assured those concerns about the current situation would be answered.

“There were two reasons in 2013. We had not provided the evidence and the intelligence that we knew who it was, and secondly there was not a proper plan thought through properly. Those two things I’m assured we’re going to answer today,” he said.



Davis said no final decision had been made. “The cabinet is meeting in full at 3.30 to discuss it. The situation in Syria is horrific – the use of chemical weapons is something the world has to prevent. We of all countries in the world, after the Skripal affair, have perhaps the most immediate knowledge of it apart from the Syrians themselves.

“We’ve got very delicate circumstances and we’ve got to make a judgment on a very careful, very well thought-out, well thought-through basis.”

Earlier on Thursday, Tugendhat, chair of the foreign affairs select committee, insisted the prime minister had the right through the royal prerogative to make the decision without consulting parliament.

May is understood to be close to committing the UK to join a coordinated military intervention in Syria, insisting the chemical weapons attack on Douma “cannot go unchallenged”. Parliament is not due to meet until Monday.

With Donald Trump and his senior advisers delaying weekend plans to stay in Washington for a meeting of the US national security council, Tugendhat said the danger of Russian retaliation had to be set against the need to respond to the breach of the international ban on the use of chemical weapons.

He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “I think that looking at what we’re doing is rather more important than looking at what Russia might do. What we’re doing is dealing with a violation of the 1925 Geneva gas protocol, and exercising the 2005 responsibility to protect.

“Russia signed up to both of those and what we’re seeing is moments when Russia should be standing with us.”

Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader, is demanding a vote in parliament first, a position backed on Thursday morning by the SNP leader in the Commons, Ian Blackford, who said: “It’s a very dangerous step for the government to take action without having that consent of parliament and by extension the consent of the people of the country.”

But the first head of Britain’s national security council, Lord Ricketts, also argued that May could act first and consult parliament later. “I think PM has to have discretion to take that sort of urgent targeted action where necessary and then present the case to parliament afterwards.”

It has become a convention that the government must have a mandate from parliament for military action since the vote on the Iraq war in 2003.

MPs on both sides now believe the 2013 vote was a mistake, because it conferred a sense of impunity on the Assad regime that was likely to have added to its readiness to use chemical weapons. Even so, there is no guarantee of a majority for action. May has to rely on the DUP’s 10 votes to win, and even a small revolt could defeat her.

An overnight poll suggested barely a fifth of voters backed even a targeted military response, and there is wide concern that it might escalate.

Lindsey German, who founded Stop the War, told Today: “No one knows where this is going to end ... You can see how this could spread very, very dangerously indeed.”

Last year, Trump launched a limited missile strike after agas attack, and Russia was given enough warning in advance to withdraw military personnel from the target. Ricketts insisted such “deconfliction” could be used again.