Oral Answers to Questions

Albert Owen Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Priti Patel]

My hon. Friend raises a really important point. We are constantly calling on other donor countries to step up and effectively pull their fingers out by putting more money into the international system. The Government are leading reform of the international system: we are challenging donor countries to be much more efficient and effective in how we distribute aid and get resources directly to people in the country and in the region.

[Albert Owen (Ynys Môn) (Lab)]

Like the Secretary of State, I met thousands of children in the camps of Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey who had fled Syria; I saw etched on their faces the fear they had experienced while in Syria. As others have done, I welcome the work in those host countries, but is the Secretary of State not embarrassed that the Government have turned their back on our obligation to take 3,000 unaccompanied children who have fled Syria and are in Europe?

[Priti Patel]

I, too, have met and spoken to hundreds of such children and seen and heard from them directly the trauma that they have experienced in travelling from Syria into the neighbouring countries. The hon. Gentleman cannot justify saying that we are not helping those children: we take the welfare of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children more than seriously. We have made very clear commitments to those children and that is what we are doing. We have committed to resettling 20,000 Syrian nationals through the Syrian vulnerable persons resettlement scheme and 3,000 of the most vulnerable children. That is on top of being the second largest bilateral donor to Syria and inside the region.