Humanitarian Crisis in the Mediterranean and Europe

Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford Excerpts

Wednesday 9th September 2015 Commons Chamber

[Hilary Benn]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman, who has great experience in these matters and is a true humanitarian. We need to put as much effort as possible into putting pressure on those who hold in their hands the future of this conflict and its resolution.

I want to reflect on what else this crisis and the wider points it raises tell us. It shows us that the Dublin agreement, which says that people entering Europe should seek asylum in the first country in which they arrive, and the Schengen agreement, which allows free movement but does not apply to the United Kingdom, are both creaking at the seams. It is unsustainable—this was the argument I made to the hon. Member for North Dorset (Simon Hoare) when he intervened earlier—for some countries, just because of their geographical position, to bear the full weight of responsibility for refugees when they clearly cannot cope.

It shows us that the idea that leaving the European Union would somehow make the problem go away is absolute nonsense. A refugee fleeing with her family and her children is not suddenly going to stop at Calais and say, “Ah! Britain’s not in the European Union any more. I’m not going to take another step forward.”

It reminds us that we live in an increasingly interdependent world: what happens in one country will affect all of us who live in another country, even if we happen to be far away. In the 21st century we cannot, as human beings, shut the doors and close the curtains and wish that the rest of the world would go away.

[Nicola Blackwood (Oxford West and Abingdon) (Con)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Hilary Benn]

I will give way and then I will bring my remarks to a conclusion.

[Nicola Blackwood]

A fleeing refugee will stop in the first place they feel safe, and the problem is that many refugees do not feel safe in the camps we are providing. We need to address the insecurity for women and girls in many of the camps. This is a short, medium and long-term problem that we are not yet solving.

[Hilary Benn]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right. Reflecting on my experience of visiting refugee camps in Darfur, that was absolutely the issue. Women were going out to collect firewood and were being attacked or raped. We must provide security. I know that the Government have done a lot of work on that issue in recent times and, again, I applaud them for that. It is more complicated than people thinking, “We are in a place where those who were killing us and who led us to flee are no longer to be found.” Insecurity is about how people feel in their minds about whether they, their family and their children are safe.

We are in this together and the way forward has to be through co-operation with our neighbours, including the rest of the European Union. We are confronted with the painful truth that the world has to be much more effective in dealing with conflicts like this before they turn into brutal and bloody civil wars. The responsibility to protect was meant to be about that, but let us be honest: in Syria, no responsibility has been taken and nobody has been protected.

We have to recognise that as well as refugees—I come to the point made by the hon. Member for Gravesham (Mr Holloway)—many, many other people are seeking to move across the globe to find a better life, in part because of conflict. They are coming not just from Syria, but from Eritrea, Afghanistan, Iraq, Nigeria, Somalia, Sudan and other countries where there is poverty and a lack of economic opportunity. We talk about economic migration, but that is the story of human history.

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[Nicola Blackwood (Oxford West and Abingdon) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for West Dunbartonshire (Martin John Docherty). Let me gently mention to him that I speak as the daughter of a South African migrant nurse who left apartheid South Africa in the early 1970s and arrived here with £5 in her pocket.

The International Development Secretary is right to say that this is not a distant crisis, but one for which we bear a moral responsibility, and, moreover, one that we feel is closely connected to us. That is certainly how many people feel in my constituency, where there has been a surge of support and where offers of help have come from all sides. I agree with the motion’s call for clarification on straightforward practical fronts, because the decisions that we make in this place to take more refugees, and the offers of help that are pouring in, will need to be co-ordinated and delivered by our local authorities. They do that willingly and they do it generously, but what we are asking will be challenging, and we must be as clear as possible, as soon as possible, so that we can deliver effectively what we promise.

We have heard a great deal today about our tackling the problem at source, and about the drivers of the crisis. In 2013, two years into the Syrian crisis, I visited Lebanon and met refugees in makeshift camps in the Beka’a valley and in the Shatila camp in Beirut. Already 80,000 had died in the conflict, and already refugee numbers were reaching a fifth of the Jordanian population and a quarter of the Lebanese population. No one can question the generosity of our humanitarian response to date. As we have heard, we are the second biggest bilateral donor, and the biggest donor in the European Union. No one in the Chamber should take this lightly, for that money saves lives: it saves the lives of people who are in the greatest peril.

In Lebanon, I met schoolteachers, business owners, police officers and aid workers. Some were local, while others were experts who had been shipped in from hotspots elsewhere to troubleshoot. I was trying to get a sense of how a country copes with that kind of influx, but it is not those conversations that have stayed with me. In Shatila, I met women and girls who had fled from southern Syria. They told me that they had received warnings over the internet that their community was about to be attacked. All the women and children had left on foot that night. Four days later, their entire village was razed to the ground. They did not know what had happened to their husbands and brothers, some of whom were still in Syria fighting.

Menal, a beautiful 19-year-old, sat there silently. She was not crying, but tears were falling down her face. Eventually I asked her what was wrong, and she said that she felt in danger all the time, and that in the camp the Lebanese police had no jurisdiction. All that she wanted to do was go back home to Syria, but she now had no home to go to: it had been bombed out of existence. Her final words to me should haunt us in this Chamber, and should remind us of the despair that drives this crisis. She said, “I was going to go to university next year. What will I do now?”

Without exception, all the Syrians to whom I have spoken since the crisis want their country back. They want their lives back. The Syrians whom I met in Lebanon were anything but economic refugees looking for new lives in Europe; they wanted to stay as close to home as possible, ready to go back and rebuild their country as soon as it was safe. Since then, however, the fighting has dragged on, and the situation has deteriorated markedly.

As the International Development Secretary says, our refugee response models do not match the scale and the time frame of this crisis. Insecurity for women and girls in the camps means that we are seeing families face the terrible choice of having to marry off 11 and 12-year-old daughters to strangers just to keep them safe. In countries such as Jordan, which is trying to maintain a delicate political balance, refugees are not permitted for fear of destabilisation. Unsurprisingly, the majority of refugees in Jordan have chosen not to live in the camps, and many are trying to eke out a living illegally in the cities. As we have heard, access to primary education—let alone secondary education—can also be hard to come by.

Given that context, it is not surprising that some refugees are losing hope, putting themselves at extreme risk at the hands of people-smugglers, and coming to the European Union in search of safety and some kind of future. We must ensure that refugees who are already in the EU find sanctuary, but I, too, accept the core principle set out by the Prime Minister in his statement on Monday. As we seek to do everything we can, we must not act as recruiters for criminal gangs and people-smugglers who are preying on the most vulnerable people. However, I also accept the principle that was set out by the shadow Foreign Secretary, that our humanitarian response must be on the basis of greatest need. That is why I think the Prime Minister is right to say that we will take 20,000 refugees from UNHCR camps in the region.

There can be no doubt that those camps, where refugees face insecurity, lack of education and no job opportunities, are the point of greatest need. There can be no doubt they are entirely unsuitable for the most vulnerable refugees—victims of torture and chemical weapon attacks, and unaccompanied children. I also share the view of the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) that the principle of greatest need may well extend to exceptional cases from the EU.

Let me end by saying that if we are to have any hope of genuinely tackling the problem at source, our efforts to combat ISIL and disrupt people-smugglers will have to be matched by the delivery of a new model of humanitarian response that is fit for a crisis on this scale and with this time frame. We need camps that are safe for women and girls, we need primary and secondary education to be available to refugees in the region so that girls like Menal do not despair, and we need innovative solutions that offer job opportunities to refugees.

I completely understand why countries such as Jordan are trying to preserve a delicate political balance, and do not want refugees to enter their labour market, but de-skilling an entire generation of Syrians—the very Syrians whom we want to return and rebuild their fragile post-conflict countries—is in no one’s interests. I encourage the Minister to consider the proposal by Paul Collier, a pre-eminent development economist, for job havens. That is a solution which the EU could offer now, and which would restore hope to many.

This country has a proud history of giving sanctuary to those who are fleeing conflict, and of protecting the persecuted. In the midst of one of the worst forced migration crises in our history, it is our job to find new and better ways to respond. We must not be the generation that fails this test of humanity.

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[James Brokenshire]

I am genuinely sorry if the hon. Gentleman finds fault in the way in which this Government —or, indeed, this country—are providing aid and assistance. This is a really serious and important matter. The point I am underlining is the leadership this country is showing, and we should not talk it down or diminish it, because it is making a real difference.

[Nicola Blackwood]

I thank the Minister for giving way: he is being very generous. I want to take us away from the statistics to the things that will actually help the refugees in the camps. Does he agree that the humanitarian crisis response model is not fit for a long-term crisis and that responding with short-term assistance does not give hope to refugees? We need to address problems of insecurity, long-term education and job opportunities. That will address the drivers of this crisis.

[James Brokenshire]

I entirely agree with my hon. Friend, whose speech I commend for underlining the importance of examining the long-term future of the region. This debate has focused on that serious issue and it is important that we continue to do so.

Most of the debate has focused on the pressure in the Mediterranean as a result of events in the middle east and north and sub-Saharan Africa. The UK works closely with international partners to tackle the conflicts in Syria, providing support to the region and fighting the criminal gangs who exploit people. We continue to play a huge role in international search and rescue efforts to save lives at sea. HMS Enterprise and the Border Force cutters are still patrolling the waters, supported by a helicopter, and the combined response that the UK has generated has saved more than 6,700 lives to date.

We recognise that many people are refugees fleeing conflict. That is why the Prime Minister announced on Monday that the UK will resettle up to 20,000 Syrian refugees over the lifetime of this Parliament, building on existing schemes. That is in addition to a further £100 million of humanitarian aid for those in camps in Syria, Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon, bringing our total contribution to more than £1 billion. The UNHCR views our contribution on resettlement as serious and substantial.