EU Council

Alison McGovern Excerpts

Monday 28th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend did a huge amount in the Foreign Office to ensure proper relationships between the EU and those north African countries, and that we put in resources to try to help stabilise them. Clearly there is much more work to be done, and we must keep on with that initiative because the best way to stop those migratory flows is to help heal those countries at source.

[Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)]

May I push the Prime Minister a little further on that point? He said in his statement that the next stages of work for Frontex were agreed at the Council? Will he say what that amounted to and what part the UK will play, both by itself and as part of necessary EU co-operation? Nobody in this country wants any more of the terrible incidents that we have seen in the Mediterranean.

[The Prime Minister]

As the hon. Lady said, the tragedies that have happened were appalling, and we must therefore improve all the ways we deal with this issue. Frontex is, as its name suggests, absolutely on the front line, and it needs the resources necessary to carry out its work. There will be a bigger and broader debate in the EU about the whole issue of migration, and we should try to avoid the sense that there are somehow front-line states such as Italy or Malta that are under particular pressure. When we look at the figures and see how many asylum seekers per 1,000 people there are coming to Britain or countries such as Hungary, we see that there is a fair burden share. All those issues will be discussed at European Council, probably after the next European elections.