Syria

Debate between Alan Duncan and Alison McGovern

Tuesday 24th July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)]

(Urgent Question): To ask the Foreign Secretary what steps he is taking to save civilian life in the conflict in Syria.

[The Minister for Europe and the Americas (Sir Alan Duncan)]

My right hon. Friend the Minister for the Middle East is travelling. I hope that the House will appreciate that Syria does not fall within my ministerial responsibilities, but I will of course endeavour to answer the urgent question and the questions that follow as best I can.

The situation in Syria is of course a humanitarian catastrophe. Over 400,000 people have been killed, and half of Syria’s 11 million population have been displaced. In these appalling circumstances, the UK has been taking all steps possible to save civilian life, and as the second-largest bilateral donor to the humanitarian response there since 2011, the UK is at the forefront of the response, by providing food, healthcare, water and other lifesaving relief. So far, we have committed £2.71 billion in response to the Syria conflict, which is our largest ever response to a single humanitarian crisis. Through our £200 million Syria Conflict, Stability and Security Fund, the UK has also provided a range of support to Syrian civilians and their communities to help save lives, bolster civil society and counter extremism. This includes our support to the White Helmets.

The White Helmet volunteers have played a particular role in saving over 115,000 lives during the conflict, at great risk to their own. They have faced particular protection risks as a result, with many killed while doing their work. It was for that reason that, as the Foreign and International Development Secretaries set out on Sunday 22 July, the UK has worked with our international partners to facilitate the rescue and relocation of a group of White Helmets volunteers and their families from southern Syria. We continue to call on all parties to protect civilians in the Syrian conflict. That includes using the multilateral organisations, including the United Nations Security Council, the UN Human Rights Council and the International Syria Support Group. The UK has also been at the forefront of efforts to strengthen global norms on chemical weapons and, of course, to deter their use.

Ultimately, there needs to be a political settlement to end the conflict. Syria’s future must be for Syrians to decide. The UK will be pragmatic about the nature of that settlement, and we will continue to support the UN process to achieve it.

[Alison McGovern]

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for granting this urgent question.

Yesterday, the Foreign Secretary and the International Development Secretary announced that the Government will help to provide safe passage for the White Helmets, as the Minister has said. They will come to the UK and other safe countries via Israel and Jordan. This is the latest development in a conflict that has been going on for seven years. We have watched as Assad’s barbaric regime bombards helpless civilians with barrel bombs and chemical weapons. The White Helmets are some of those who choose not to fight and it is correct, therefore, that we give them sanctuary. But before I ask about that specific announcement yesterday, I want to ask the Minister what more we will do, because the situation is urgent. There are three major problems that the Government need to give attention to.

First, there are several million people in the northern city of Idlib today. Hundreds of thousands of people have been pushed there by the Syrian regime, following the siege of Aleppo and the bombardment of other towns. These internal refugees are all now waiting for what comes next, and if Idlib is a repeat of Aleppo, the consequences for life—of children particularly—will be utterly horrific. I would like the Minister to explain what discussions are going on inside Government to respond specifically to that threat. As a member of the UN Security Council and one of the biggest aid donors to civilian protection in Syria, what efforts will the Government make now to deter Aleppo-style attacks on hospitals and schools, and how will we prevent further use of chemical weapons?

Many expect the Syrian Government to repeat its previous barbaric use of its bombs and its chemical weapons on Syrian civilians over the summer. I am simply asking the Government to do something to try to protect people.

Secondly, the Minister mentions the aid we have given, but we need to make sure it is getting into Syria. Last week, the hon. Member for Isle of Wight (Mr Seely) and I visited southern Turkey, where we met 20 or so Syrian doctors who had escaped Syria for a short while to receive training from British trauma surgeon David Nott. These doctors have a target on their backs just for doing their job—which is an impossible job to do but made immeasurably harder simply because they lack the basic supplies that British taxpayers have paid for to get to them. We need to make sure that we carry out diplomatic efforts to get that aid across the border.

The hon. Member for Isle of Wight and I brought back a letter from those doctors. They say in this letter that they are bracing themselves for a summer of death, so whether it is by doing all we can to deter the bombardment of Idlib, or simply using our influence, as I have said, to get supplies across the border to these doctors, we must help.

Finally, please can the Minister tell the House what support the White Helmets will now be offered? What will the scale of that help be? Will other vulnerable humanitarians in Syria be offered similar assistance? There are others from international NGOs trapped in Syria who require safe passage out. Can we guarantee resettlement for all of those who need it, and work with border countries to get them out and to the UK?

I know this is difficult. I know that there are many in this House who will simply say there is nothing we can do. But I think that with political will there is a way to help, and it will cost us very little to try. Surely, saving one life alone would be worth the attempt.

[Sir Alan Duncan]

I absolutely commend the hon. Lady, both for her question today and for the fact that she recently personally visited the region, along with my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Mr Seely). She has thus seen at first hand what is going on, and speaks with authority in asking this urgent question.

There is no difference, I think, across the House; we all share a deep, basic human concern for the horror of this conflict, which has gone on for seven years. I recall its start when I was a DFID Minister, and was in the forefront of many of the fundraising conferences we had to try to turn as much as £1 billion on a sixpence at the beginning of the 2010 to 2015 Government, in order to focus on this sudden, ghastly—and now long-standing —conflict. We completely share the hon. Lady’s attitude and indeed much of her analysis.

First, on the White Helmets, this is a very important opportunity for us to issue our thanks and appreciation. They have been extremely brave. They are community-based civil society people, who put themselves at risk to do basic things, such as be first responders, clear the rubble and rescue the injured. They do so having been demonised in particular by the Russians, who have even accused them of carrying out chemical weapons attacks themselves.

It has been an absolutely remarkable feat of extraction to take the White Helmets out of southern Syria. We give enormous thanks to the Israelis for the efforts they made once requested by us, our international partners and the Americans. My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary, who had only been in the job for two days, was absolutely significant in discussing this with President Trump, when he was with the Prime Minister at Chequers, to try to persuade him to put a request to the Israelis to do it. Clearly, that has worked, and as a result many of hundreds of White Helmets and their families have been extracted from southern Syria.

The broader issue the hon. Lady describes is of course much more challenging. I totally understand what she says about the need, as she would put it, “to do something”. We are all frustrated at the difficulty of getting access for humanitarian purposes in territory that is increasingly controlled by the Syrians, the Russians and the Iranians. The delivery of the humanitarian aid we have on offer is perhaps more difficult now than it was when the conflict was at its height, because there are fewer pockets through which we can actually and easily deliver the aid we want to deliver. We are, for instance, talking to the hon. Lady’s former colleague David Miliband and the International Rescue Committee, which has its own people there, separate from the White Helmets. Wherever there are people delivering humanitarian aid, we want to give them maximum access and maximum protection.

On spending, we remain the second biggest donor in the conflict, and this is the largest budget we have ever given to a single cause of this sort. Our efforts will continue, and I am sure that the Minister for the Middle East will be making further statements in the House once we resume after the summer.