Oral Answers to Questions

Alison McGovern Excerpts

Wednesday 29th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The whole question of working with the companies to ensure that extremist material is removed as quickly as possible is not new; that work has been going on for a number of years. Through the counter terrorism internet referral unit, we have a process that enables the police to take material down. Some 250,000 pieces of material have been taken down from the internet since February 2010, and there has been a significant increase in that activity in the past couple of years or so. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary will meet the companies later this week to talk to them about this important issue. We do not want to see extremist material on the internet, and we want to see companies taking action to remove material that encourages hate and division.

[Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)]

Late on Saturday night, a massive explosion devastated New Ferry in my constituency. We are thinking of all those who are hurt. It is a miracle that more people were not injured. The community now faces significant dereliction. Will the Prime Minister join me in thanking all those who looked after my community over the weekend and in recent days? Will she arrange for me a meeting with the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, so that we can discuss how the Government can help us to rebuild New Ferry?

[The Prime Minister]

I am very happy to do both of those things. First, I commend and thank all those in the emergency services and others who worked so hard to support the hon. Lady’s local community when the devastating explosion took place. That work will continue; it did not happen just over the weekend. Support will be given to the community into the future. I am very happy to ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government to meet her and discuss how that community can be rebuilt and can overcome the impact of this explosion.

Oral Answers to Questions

Alison McGovern Excerpts

Wednesday 11th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Priti Patel]

First, I commend my hon. Friend on her work on, and leadership in, Singing for Syrians; it is an incredible organisation and has been very successful in raising important funds. On making sure that the money is not wasted and goes directly into the region and in-country, we not only support, fund and collaborate with trusted partners, but, importantly, measure the outcomes that we are delivering in these essential humanitarian policies.

[Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State is already talking about Aleppo in the past tense, but the besiegement is still happening right now, and the British Government must do more. What representations has she made to the Foreign Secretary about putting in place more and harder sanctions on Russia?

Commonwealth Development Corporation Bill (First sitting)

Alison McGovern Excerpts

Committee Debate: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 6th December 2016 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

Thank you. We will move on. Alison McGovern.

[Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)]

Q I have two questions. The first is for the CDC—I do not mind if you answer, Diana, or if Graham does—and the second is for the Minister.

The first question is on crowding in versus crowding out. What is your measure for additionality? Can you tell me numerically what the test is? How do you know for sure that you are not doing what the private sector would do anyway, and how numerically do you know that projects and funds are meeting that test?

Secondly, the Bill proposes an incredible level of freedom on investing in the CDC. Why is the cap so high? Why are we expressing such a high level of confidence in CDC, as opposed to any other aid mechanism?

Diana Noble: I am happy to take the first question. It is a very important question that has been extremely high on the agenda of the board and the management team over the past five years.

We felt back in 2012 that this had not been taken seriously enough by the CDC pre-2012. We engaged an extremely experienced person—ex IFC—to look at the whole area of additionality for us. He wrote a long report and went to talk to all the other DFIs as well. Our guidance to him was, “We want CDC to have the highest standards of additionality across all the DFIs.” This is a difficult area. He has written a long report and I would be very happy to share it with Committee members.

The report led to some broad principles that say that CDC completely understands that we must play a unique role in every investment that we make. This is not generic across a portfolio; this is a standard that the investment committee applies for each investment that we make. We must be satisfied that our unique role is either that we are bringing capital that another investor will not bring or that we are bringing some unique expertise that is important and will lead to a material improvement that another investor will not bring. We take that incredibly seriously.

The team of CDC has no interest in doing what the private sector will already do. We take real pride in being distinctive and bringing something special to our investing companies.

[Alison McGovern]

Q May I briefly follow up on that? You say that either there is not another investor, which is clear, or that we need to bring some unique experience. What does that really mean? That seems to me like a catch-all.

Rory Stewart: The primary measure that has been set by the Department is the development impact grid, which defines what the most difficult countries are in which to invest. It looks at three criteria—GDP per capita, the amount of capital available and the difficulty of doing business. The last two help us from a strategic level to answer your question. I will hand back to Diana.

Diana Noble: You are right. It is at the point of investment that we say we are bringing expertise to a company. That is a forward look. It would typically be environmental and social issues. For example, we worked with an online retailer in India to transform how they thought about their supply chain and to sign them up to the ethical trading initiative, which was the first time that any online retailer in India had done that.

Of course, we are saying that at the point of the investment. We do not know whether it is going to happen. What we have done—again, we are the first DFI to do this—is implement an external objective review of every case, in which we only justify it on this additional expertise, not on capital. We had our first report back that said that in all of those cases—they are a minority—we did in fact actually deliver and in a lot of cases we delivered more than we expected at the time of the investment committee. I agree with you that none of us should be justifying an investment on an expectation that does not happen.

Rory Stewart: The answer to the second question is that over a five-year period we are looking at a ceiling option on the basis of a business case of CDC being able to draw down up to £4.5 billion. That is a very large sum of taxpayers’ money and we need to be very responsible about it. It is also worth putting that in context. The overall annual expenditure is estimated at £12 billion. To put that £1 billion in context, in a single year we would typically put something in the region of £5 billion into multilateral institutions. To illustrate that what we are putting into CDC is not out of proportion to other comparable investments, the type of funding we produced for the World Bank over the last three-year period was £3.3 billion. We are about to do another replenishment, but it is of that order.

Why are we putting it into CDC? Well, there are a couple of reasons. One is that we believe CDC is a very effective vehicle for delivering jobs and economic development in some of the hardest places in the world. The second thing, contextually, is that there is a difficult issue, to which we can return, of comparing a stock with a flow—in other words, comparing what will be a capital fund for CDC with the annual expenditure of the Department—but even at 8% we are likely to be significantly lower than the amount of money that Germany or France, for example, put into their equivalents.

[The Chair]

A quick follow-up.

[Alison McGovern]

Q Minister, you mentioned the index that is designed to drive investment to the poorest parts of the world, yet we have heard about investment in online retail in India. My understanding was that the Government’s policy is to move investment away from middle income countries, or countries towards the middle income range, such as India. How can the two approaches fit together? It makes no sense.

Rory Stewart: In the grid, we break India down by state and target the poorest states. There is a transition in India. You are absolutely right that the Government have decided to move away from traditional development grants and into technical assistance and the kind of financing that CDC would produce. We do two things in an Indian context: we target the poorest states and, specifically on the question of the online retailer, we are able to do things in India that we might not be able to do in some of the more testing, difficult markets. With that particular online retailer we are also able to focus on driving up labour standards and making sure that skills and worker safety are protected. It is worth bearing it in mind that India, despite all its very strong economic performance, still has some of the very poorest areas in the world. Enormous numbers of people are on less than $2 a day, and many are on less than $1 a day.

[Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)]

Q I would like to probe a little more on the specifics of the hard figures in the Bill—the £6 billion and the ultimate cap of £12 billion. Where do those numbers come from? What was the needs assessment that these are about the amounts of money that the Department feels CDC needs? Was there dialogue between the Department and CDC to reach those amounts? Why go for such hard figures, rather than some kind of proportional formula? Is there any indication of a timescale in which these amounts might eventually be reached?

Rory Stewart: It is a question of setting a ceiling. We welcome this, but it is quite unusual in the Department’s spending to have to go through primary legislation in order to make a financial allocation. I mentioned to Ms McGovern that, in a three-year period, we would allocate, say, £3.3 billion to the World Bank. We do not do that through primary legislation. This Bill attempts to give the Department the ability to do what we do with the rest of our budget, which is to make decisions on the basis of ministerial decisions, accountability to Parliament and strategic decision making. Specifically in relation to CDC, we would like the ability, should a business case emerge, to give it more money without having to come back to Parliament with primary legislation every time we wished to do so.

Where was the figure arrived at? Well, the figure was arrived at after a discussion with CDC about the maximum possible amount it could realistically require over the period, which takes into account its staff resources, the demand in the developing world and its past spend. If you look at CDC’s last round, it put about £1.2 billion through in a year, of which £735 million was a recapitalisation from the Government.

Looking forward over the next five years—2016 to 2021—this would allow them to draw down something of the order of £1 billion a year. In effect, it is only £4.5 billion because of that £6 billion they already have £1.5 billion. On the next bit of what they take in the future, if I’m honest with the Committee, my preference would have been to say, for the reasons and principles I laid out in relation to our other spend—our investment to the World Bank—that Ministers could come back through secondary legislation. A statutory instrument is how I just did a £350 million addition to the World Bank. I think you were on that Committee, Mr Grady. That would be the process we would hope to do with CDC.

My preference would have been to just give Ministers the power to go to a Statutory Instrument Committee to ask for that money, but the Clerks of the House advised us that it would be better to set a financial limit to that power, so we chose for the period 2021 to 2026 the same amount we chose for 2016 to 2021. That is how that figure is arrived at.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alison McGovern]

Q In this session, Minister, you said that you do not yet have CDC’s strategy, which we knew. We have discussed the fact that there was not much clarity about investments in India and whether or not they were going to the poorest states. You have explained that you are expecting CDC to increase the risk of the investments it makes at the same time as you are radically increasing the amount of capital available to it. So just for clarity, which do you believe to be CDC’s greatest priority? Is it the reduction of poverty; or is it return on investment, so that the CDC has continuity of capital?

Rory Stewart: The priority of CDC has to be to do good without losing money. The point is not to lose money while doing good, so we are focused on jobs and economic development without losing money. That is the guiding principle that CDC follows in everything it does.

[Stephen Doughty]

It’s not poverty—

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[James Duddridge]

Q Should not we be encouraging it to give more than £1 billion a year?

Sir Paul Collier: Yes, of course. The future of aid is to get decent firms to go to places where they will not make much money until there are lots more of them.

[Alison McGovern]

Q Very briefly, obviously there is a massive need for capital in Africa, and the question is how we should spend UK taxpayers’ money. I would like to come back to you, Tom. As we heard in the previous session, we are asking CDC to take increased risks with quite a lot of increased capital, but we do not yet have its strategy. Do you think that that approach is probably the wrong way round?

Tom McDonald: There is a cart-and-horse problem here, is there not? One of the things that we saw in the 2015 recapitalisation business case was that the Department did go through a thorough process of assessing, in collaboration with CDC, the art of the possible. There are good foundations on which the Department can build.

One of our worries, which we set out in the report, is that CDC has to be comfortable that it can absorb this money in two ways. One is internally: does it have the capacity to grow, still be agile and make decisions in the way it has done in the past? That is its internal operating model, if you like. The other is whether it has access to all the opportunities for investment. Now that it is again in the business of direct investment, that requires a lot more effort from the teams that are putting together these deals. There needs to be a discussion between the two bodies over the remainder of the spending review period, or the Parliament, about whether DFID is clear about what it wants from CDC, where it wants CDC to operate, and the principles on which it wants it to work. From CDC’s perspective, can it cope with the volume of money and can it, in good faith, invest all that in a portfolio of deals that will still allow it to meet its targets?

Gideon Rabinowitz: I have a very quick point to follow up on that. As well as our mission to tackle the injustice of poverty around the world, we are very keen in our work and our engagement with the development community to push for adequate public scrutiny and trust in the work that the British Government and institutions such as CDC do. We think that needs to be central to this debate, so these are really good issues that we are discussing. The absence of this investment strategy is making it a little difficult to get a fuller perspective. There is clearly a dynamic situation around CDC. I have looked at the business case for the last capitalisation last year, which said,

“CDC has previously determined that given investment needs, it could productively deploy up to £1bn of additional capital.”

We heard from this morning’s witnesses that that situation seems to have changed. An additional point was made in the business case that, of the £735 million that DFID allocated to CDC last year, it would need to go beyond that only in 2019. It is a very fluid situation, and the lack of clarity over that investment strategy and how the situation on the ground with CDC is changing poses challenges. It is important to get that clarity.

[Richard Graham]

Q A very quick question for you, Tom—probably a one-word answer. If I got you right earlier, you were calling for a more effective measurement of the quality of jobs generated by CDC. Do we have such a measurement in the UK?

Tom McDonald: A one-word answer would be no.

Oral Answers to Questions

Alison McGovern Excerpts

Wednesday 16th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[James Wharton]

I thank my hon. Friend for his question. I met him only a few weeks ago in his capacity as chair of the all-party parliamentary group on HIV and AIDS, and we discussed the contribution the UK makes to the global health fund. I was delighted that, shortly thereafter, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State announced a significant contribution from the UK. We remain a world leader in combating HIV/AIDS, as well as many other terrible diseases that affect girls and boys, and we are determined to play our part in ensuring these diseases are tackled, and ultimately eliminated, in the best and swiftest way possible.

[Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)]

This morning I was with Monir Mustafa of the White Helmets, who was absolutely clear that Assad’s bombs are targeting schools in Syria and the girls inside them. Has the Minister made representations to the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary to come to this House and bring forward a strategy to protect schools, hospitals and civilians?

[Mr Speaker]

We are discussing education for girls in developing countries, which was, I am sure, what the hon. Lady had very much in the forefront of her mind.

Oral Answers to Questions

Alison McGovern Excerpts

Wednesday 14th September 2016 Commons Chamber

[Priti Patel]

My hon. Friend raises an important point. The UK is the largest donor to GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance, which protects children from rubella through measles and rubella vaccinations, and of course GAVI has been set up very much to do exactly what my hon. Friend says. We have the UK aid match scheme, and Sense International has received over £200,000 for this very purpose in Uganda and Kenya in particular. I look forward to hearing from my hon. Friend about his findings from his visit.

[Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)]

Yesterday, the all-party group on Syria—[Interruption.]—met so that we could, with friends from Syria, remember our colleague Jo Cox—[Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I really do think that this question in respect of the seriousness of the situation in Syria, and in deference to our late colleague Jo Cox, should be heard in silence.

[Alison McGovern]

Yesterday, the all-party group on Syria met so that we could, with our friends from Syria, remember our colleague Jo Cox. May I ask the Secretary of State, further to answers she gave a moment ago with regard to besieged areas, what discussions she has had with colleagues in the region about making sure that sufficient resources are stockpiled in nearby areas so that as soon as that humanitarian window opens we can make sure those areas get the help they need?

[Priti Patel]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right once again to highlight the appalling crisis and the conflict we see in Syria right now. Further to the points I made earlier, with the new cessation of hostilities coming into force we are of course focused on all avenues of access to get humanitarian aid and support into many parts of Syria that have not seen aid or any humanitarian support for a considerable time. With regard to the discussions I have been having, I have been speaking to colleagues in the region and colleagues across government, and I have also been speaking to our international partners about how we can get that aid through to these critical locations.

Humanitarian Crisis in the Mediterranean and Europe

Alison McGovern Excerpts

Wednesday 9th September 2015 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins (Louth and Horncastle) (Con)]

I am pleased to follow the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee, the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), with whom I had the pleasure of attending an oral evidence session yesterday. I welcome the Prime Minister’s statement on welcoming 20,000 more refugees directly from camps in Syria and giving a further £100 million in aid to bring our financial assistance in the region to more than £1 billion.

The hon. Member for Moray (Angus Robertson), who is not in his seat, urged us to look at the text of the motion. I have done exactly that, and I must confess that I am disappointed by its title “Humanitarian crisis in the Mediterranean and Europe”. I believe that this is a worldwide humanitarian crisis that demands a worldwide humanitarian response.

Other hon. Members will no doubt focus on whether countries outside Europe are doing what they can to help people in need in Syria, but the fact is that the United Kingdom is leading the world in this. We have already invested £900 million in refugee camps, which is the second highest figure in the world and higher than that of any other European country. Frankly, that figure is unimaginable. What does it mean? It means 400 million relief packages, clean sanitation for nearly 7 million people and food rations for 18 million people. It is helping many more people in the region than any resettlement programme can hope to help in Europe. Moreover, that real, practical help in the region has been happening since February 2012.

I am pleased that the further £100 million will mean that more children and families are helped in the immediate vicinity of their home country. It is a genuinely compassionate response to help people near their homes. We must have an eye to the future. As I pointed out on Monday, when the Prime Minister made his statement, Syria will need its brightest and its best to help rebuild its future. By helping people near their homes, we are maximising the chances of that happening.

As a new Member, I am very conscious of the collaborative approach in the Chamber today, so I hope that what I am about to say is taken in the sense in which I mean it—as a genuine inquiry. The hon. Member for Moray and the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) have focused on the number of refugees we are accepting, but we are taking the different approach of focusing on need, rather than numbers. The sobering reality is that there is no magic number. Syria has 11 million displaced people. The United Kingdom cannot possibly absorb all the people in Syria who need help; frankly, neither can the continent of Europe. That is before we begin to look at other parts of the world that are suffering from conflict.

Yesterday, under the eminent chairmanship of the right hon. Member for Leicester East, the Home Affairs Committee discussed the issue of Calais with the mayor of Calais. She told us that 3,500 people in Calais are currently seeking refuge, coming not just from Syria, but from all sorts of troubled parts of the world, including Eritrea, Sudan and Yemen. To put that into perspective, the population of Eritrea is 5 million and the population of Sudan is 40 million. We cannot possibly hope to give a home to every person in places of great difficulty and trouble, no matter how much we wish we could.

[Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)]

I offer this response in the spirit in which the hon. Lady is speaking. It is a mathematical truth that one is more than none and that each additional life that we can make better is an improvement on what we have been doing. The problem is that the Government have been too slow and helped too few.

[Victoria Atkins]

I will come on to the hon. Lady’s point in terms of what can be managed locally, but if I may, I will continue to talk about the text of the motion, which I hope will develop my argument and counter her point.

The text refers to refugees in Europe being absorbed as part of the humanitarian response. Given what the mayor of Calais said yesterday, how do we choose who to take out of the 3,500 people currently in Calais? How do we say to someone, “No, we’re not going to resettle you or give you a home because you are from Eritrea rather than from Syria”?

We must also take into account the very practical problems on the ground in Calais, such as the deliberate destruction of paperwork. When people are trafficked, the criminal gangs tell them, “Destroy your paperwork—then they can’t tell where you come from and send you back.” Although I understand the call to accept refugees who are already in Europe, how on earth can that be accomplished realistically, given such practicalities? Is not the much better approach to take people who we know are Syrian refugees in refugee camps in that area? They are in desperate need, because they are the most vulnerable and are often unable to make the journeys that some people in Europe have made.

--- Later in debate ---

[Anne McLaughlin]

I think the hon. and learned Member knows very well that I did not say anything that would disagree with either of those premises.

[Alison McGovern]

I want to support what the hon. Lady is saying. She did not say anything to disagree with that. Rather, she did something profoundly important, which is to share the lived experience of those we are here to represent. That is why we learn the lessons of this outpouring of support for the refugees, and we shape our country according to those moral values.

[Anne McLaughlin]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention.

My city of Glasgow is built on the back of those fleeing crisis: cleared highlanders whose houses were burned down so they could never return; Irishmen and women looking for refuge after the famine; Jewish families from the Baltic fleeing pogroms under the Tsars; and more recent refugees who have come and established themselves in Glasgow, many in my constituency.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lucy Frazer]

First, it is important that we work with our local communities, which we are doing, and to use our foreign aid budget to do that. This is a very separate issue. I think what the hon. Gentleman is saying is that we should open our doors to people who are not refugees, because if we are giving people asylum or refuge, they will have access to our education facilities anyway; that is part of the process. Secondly, international co-operation is not only important, but essential. Yesterday, the shadow Home Secretary started her speech with a reference to the Kindertransport. But the challenges posed by Nazi Germany in the early 1940s were taken up not by one country, or even by Europe, but by the UN. Forty four countries signed a declaration in November 1943. An international effort on a significant scale is needed here. Britain leads the world in committing 0.7% of its budget to foreign aid.

[Alison McGovern]

The hon. Lady is making an excellent case for the Government to join the UN resettlement scheme, but they have refused to do so. Does she wonder why that was?

[Lucy Frazer]

The Government have already taken people in through a UN scheme and they are committed to take more. They have already taken refugees through asylum. Of course we need to work at European and international levels, but the UN and countries around the world need to do more. We must call on other countries to live up to the commitment of 0.7%.

--- Later in debate ---

[Helen Whately (Faversham and Mid Kent) (Con)]

Last week’s heartbreaking images united the country in horror and compassion. I have been deluged with letters and emails from constituents wishing to express their compassion, and I am sure the same is true for all hon. Members. This House has shown an unusual unity on the issue and has brought it on to our agenda for three days in a row. I welcome the tone of the motion tabled by the hon. Member for Moray (Angus Robertson) and his support for the Government’s long-term humanitarian commitment. I was rather disappointed that the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) set a contrasting tone and that he feels less pride in Britain’s long-term commitment to humanitarian support for refugees.

Personally, and on behalf of many of my constituents, I welcome the Prime Minister’s commitment to taking in 20,000 more Syrian refugees, on top of the 5,000 already here, and particularly the fact that they will be taken directly from the camps. That gives a safer route for the most vulnerable refugees, who would be unable to make the trek across Europe to Calais.

My constituency, and Kent overall, has felt the consequences of people making that trek across Europe in recent months. In particular, we have seen a large increase in the number of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children, and they need looking after. Kent County Council has worked extremely hard to find homes for those children, but it has run out of foster homes for them and for local children. Other councils have helped, but not nearly enough. In the coming weeks and months we need the rhetoric from local authority leaders across the country to be matched with action, with them taking in more families and, in particular, more children. I hope that we will now see a nationwide response, and that response needs to be centrally co-ordinated to ensure that those children are given homes across Britain, as the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) suggested.

Although it is wonderful to welcome refugees, there is a cost. Kent County Council has estimated that there is an unfunded cost of £6 million in taking in extra asylum-seeking children this year. That financial burden needs to be shared across the country, not just in the areas that take a greater proportion of refugees. I welcome the proposal to use the foreign aid budget to help contribute to those costs.

[Alison McGovern]

The hon. Lady makes an important point. I think that I am right in saying that the north-west of England has taken the most refugees, so I agree that our job is to ensure that all parts of the country have the resources they need to welcome refugees should they want to.

[Helen Whately]

I thank the hon. Lady for that intervention. She is right that we need not only to welcome refugees in what we say, but to plan how to care for them properly. As my hon. and learned Friend the Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Lucy Frazer) said, we need to give them the chance of a good life in this country.

As the Opposition parties have recognised, the UK has made a huge contribution to helping refugees through our £1 billion aid commitment, which has not always been as popular as it is now. It is good to see that the country is rallying behind the virtues of making a contribution on that scale. However, we need to make sure that our emotional response to the images of last week does not cloud the reason in our response. I believe very strongly that we should concentrate our help where it can do most good. Most of the 12 million people displaced are still in the region, with 7.6 million in Syria, 1.9 million in Turkey, and 1.1 million in Lebanon. Being in those countries means they are more likely to return home when eventually their homes are safe, and then they will be in a position to help rebuild Syria, so we would be right to focus our aid there.

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[Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)]

It is good to speak in this important debate. I listened carefully to the contribution from the hon. Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham) and the remarks that he made about whether numbers matter. Of course, it is not numbers that matter, but need. If some of us are exasperated about numbers, it is because the Government are not doing enough and we are trying to encourage them in that direction.

I want to send out a message from this House that I hope everyone will agree with. It was a fine innovation when we decided that it would not just be for the Government to dictate our agenda, but for the public. Hundreds of thousands of people have signed e-petitions and the House has listened and put the issues that matter onto our agenda. One of those issues is one that the British people care about not for their own sakes, but for the sake of others. It is testimony to everybody who bothered to sign the petition that they are changing politics today.

One of the great moral puzzles is working out what we owe to others who are far away—who are not of our own family but of someone else’s family far away—and the Secretary of State answered that question in her contribution. She has met refugees and she told us about them. She has met people who have fled Syria, and she told us what she had heard from them. I ask whether anyone can hear those stories, or the contributions from the hon. Members for Glasgow North East (Anne McLaughlin) and for Oxford West and Abingdon (Nicola Blackwood), and not wonder if we can do a little more.

When we meet people, we realise they are just like us. I want to read out the words of Hassan, who is 14 and from Syria. He said:

“The children in Syria need help. They need help because they are being tortured, shelled, shot at. They take children and put them in front of them. They create a human shield of children. They know that the people in the town will not shoot their own children. I saw this with my own eyes.

I want children in Syria to escape. They should run away so they don’t die in the shelling.

What do I remember of Syria? I remember that whenever shelling took place we ran to a shelter. Inside, children shouted and wept a lot, they were so afraid. I remember that so many children were being tortured.

Because of what is happening in Syria we don’t play any more. I miss my house. I miss my neighbourhood. I miss playing football.”

Football, the universal language. The more we find out about the refugees, the more we realise that we are just like them, and that is why we need to help them.

The problem is that progress feels painfully slow. Back in 2014, we had a debate about whether the Government should join the UN resettlement scheme. The Government said that they would not join it, and in the end they came up with their own scheme. As Member after Member has said, that scheme has taken insufficient numbers. My right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) mentioned the debate I held about refugees. In June, I asked the Prime Minister whether he felt that we were doing enough to help vulnerable children from Syria. In his words, he said that he was “convinced that we are”. It took the events in August to make him realise how wrong he was. Forgive me, Madam Deputy Speaker, if I am a little bit infuriated at times at such very slow progress.

I want to make two brief points and then say a final word. First, I know that the Government are capable of listening. The Secretary of State for International Development has listened and, as evidence has come before her, she has changed her position. She is a reasonable person who has done the right thing. I know that Ministers are prepared to do the right thing, so I say this to them. Let us be a part of Europe. Let us see what is happening on the southern coast of our continent, in Greece and in Italy, and say to the people there, “We stand with you. We know that you cannot deal with this alone.” Let us in this House listen to Matteo Renzi’s call to be a part of Europe and to demonstrate our European values by saying that we believe in freedom, tolerance and respect, as well as a place to live and a decent life for each and every person. Let us show some leadership. My right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East, the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, said that leadership has been lacking. Let us change that, because the rest of Europe is crying out for the UK to play a role, in part by offering sanctuary to some of the people who, perhaps in exceptional circumstances, are already in Europe.

[Mark Durkan]

My hon. Friend may recall that she questioned the Prime Minister in October 2013, following the EU Council, on precisely these issues in the Mediterranean. At that time, the Prime Minister told her that

“we should try to avoid the sense that there are…front-line states…that are under particular pressure.”—[Official Report, 28 October 2013; Vol. 569, c. 664.]

He went on to use Hungary as a comparator to show that the UK was taking its fair share of the burden.

[Alison McGovern]

In this debate, several hon. Members have reminded me of my previous contributions, and I thank them for doing so. I will not shut up about this because these people matter. In response to what we said in 2013, 2014 and this year, the Government have demonstrated that they have the capacity to change their mind. All I ask is that they show what sensible, reasonable people they are and change their mind again.

We need to play such a role in Europe. We need to demonstrate—whether in exceptional circumstances, or under whatever definition we set—that we are prepared to help our friends in Europe. The UK needs to be

“a piece of the Continent, a part of the main”,

as John Donne, one of our country’s finest poets, said.

Secondly, we need truly to respond in policy terms to the outpouring of good will towards refugees and victims of the conflict in Syria. Never mind the numbers; let us show that we have heard what the people of Britain think and take refugees out of the migration target. I think that the Government have failed on their migration target, which was ill-conceived for loads of reasons to do with the place of universities in our economy and the needs of great businesses, such as Unilever in my patch. It was a bad idea, but they are the Government and they have a right to do it. What they do not have the right to do is to say that we should decide whether we are living up to our duty towards the people coming to our country needing our help and needing sanctuary on the basis of some arbitrary statistical target that they have set for themselves in the heat of an election.

[Hannah Bardell (Livingston) (SNP)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on her incredible and hugely impassioned speech. Does she agree that this is not about numbers? We must stop talking about such people as numbers; they are human beings. This is a human tragedy, and it needs a human response. Every time somebody has to flee their country as a result of what is happening, it is a tragedy. I share her views.

[Alison McGovern]

I thank the hon. Lady for her contribution. She makes my point for me perhaps more eloquently than I was able to when I said earlier that one is better than none. For each person we can help, we should be glad we have done so in the knowledge that immigrants to this country make a massive contribution and build us up to what we are today.

I ask the Government to think again. They have shown they can do it. They have shown that they are prepared to listen. I ask them to show that compassion and reason once more. It makes no sense to say on the one hand that we will decide whether somebody can claim asylum and seek sanctuary in this country based on need and based on their circumstances, while on the other hand counting in refugees with a migration target that is essentially just a number that has been decided for other reasons. We should decide each case based on its merits.

I do not underestimate the size and scale of what we are asking local authority leaders to do. I do not underestimate that for a moment, and I thought the hon. Member for Faversham and Mid Kent (Helen Whately) made some serious and excellent points on that, but that is why it is all the more deeply impressive that local authority leaders, such as Richard Leese and Joe Anderson in the north-west of England, have stood up to be counted. They have said that their parts of the world will welcome refugees and will do all that is necessary to provide sanctuary for them. Of course, the Government will have to work hard to make sure there are resources and we need to empower local communities so that they feel able to welcome refugees, but working together we can do it. As it happens, DFID resources have often been spent, as necessary, on people in this country. We need to find different ways to fund this effort, but I applaud all local authority leaders who have shown that they are prepared to welcome refugees into their city, town or county.

In closing, I want to say a final word on refugee camps. I have never visited a refugee camp, but the Secretary of State has and she made an excellent case for why they are not the best idea in terms of sanctuary. They are temporary and they are unsafe. They can be good places where people can get medical care, but in the end it comes down to this: nobody’s home should be a camp. That is why we need to truly understand what it means to give sanctuary. It does not just mean, “Here’s a roof over your head for the moment,” necessary though that is. It does not just mean a way to feed somebody’s children and give them medical care, absolutely necessary though that is. It means: here is the place where you can belong. That is sanctuary, that is what we should offer refugees, and that is why we will keep asking the Government until they do more.

Oral Answers to Questions

Alison McGovern Excerpts

Wednesday 5th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

My right hon. Friend is right to raise this issue. We have committed £42.5 million now to support refugees in the region; there are estimates that their number might rise to more than 700,000 by the end of the year, and 1.5 million are at risk of food insecurity. It is crucial that we make sure we have the humanitarian assistance in place to support these people.

[Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)]

The first problem with DFID’s inaction on corruption highlighted by last week’s report from the Independent Commission for Aid Impact is that the watchdog tells us that DFID’s objectives are

“not focused on the poor”.

The commission’s recommendations demand that DFID establish a new unit specifically to drive out this curse. Will the Secretary of State do so—yes or no?

[Justine Greening]

DFID does a huge amount of work tackling corruption. The One campaign said:

“The UK has a strong reputation for getting its own house in order on anti-corruption”,

so we do not need to take lectures from the Labour party. I can assure the hon. Lady that our strategy is also about tackling corruption upstream. Work that we have done in Nigeria, for example, with anti-corruption agencies has helped recover £1.5 billion and supported more than 2,500 corruption cases being brought.

International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Bill

Alison McGovern Excerpts

Friday 12th September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Swayne]

Further to that point of order. May I briefly put on the record Her Majesty’s Government’s tribute to the reverend doctor? He was absolutely critical to the peace process in Northern Ireland, and the House and the nation will be grateful to him for the role that he played in it. Our thoughts will undoubtedly be with the hon. Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley) on the loss that his family have suffered. The doctor was a big personality, with a formidable public persona, but as you have said, Madam Deputy Speaker, those who knew him in the House, will have known a very different man, who was kind and gentle. I am confident that there will be many in the House who will kneel down this evening and will say, “Lord Jesus Christ, when Thou comest into Thy kingdom, remember Thy servant Ian. Amen.”

[Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)]

Further to that point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. The Opposition are saddened by the loss of Lord Bannside, the former Member of Parliament for North Antrim. My colleagues and I support most deeply the words of the hon. Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan) and the Minister. Our thoughts are with Lord Bannside’s family. We send them our deepest sympathies, most particularly his son, the current hon. Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley).

[Sir Malcolm Bruce]

Further to that point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. May I join in the tributes and recognition? Ian Paisley was one of those larger-than-life characters that this House has been proud to embrace. He never had any difficulty making his voice heard. Before the microphones came in, he showed that he did not even need one. The hon. Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan) is right that he will be remembered as a different man in private from the one he appeared in public. He was a man with a great sense of humour and great charm, which I think will surprise many people. He also had his principles. In the end, he was able to stand his ground and yet to reach across and help deliver a peace settlement in Ireland, which many thought he would not do. I think that that is the finest tribute to him.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Let us just imagine what would happen if the Government intended to support a particular project somewhere, but found towards the end of the financial year that it was rife with corruption and therefore thought it best not to spend money on it. They would not be able to do that. The Government would not be allowed to say, “We’ll keep the money and not spend it,” but would be forced, at the last minute, to spend it, because Parliament had insisted that it had to be spent, come what may. How on earth is that a sensible way to ask a Department to act?

We heard the idea that if we did this and set the lead, all other countries would follow. We hear it time and again in different contexts. CND started this in the 1980s—“If we get rid of all our nuclear weapons, every other country in the world will follow.” We all knew—even the Labour party came to realise—that that was a load of old nonsense. Then we started hearing it on climate change—“If we hit our climate change targets and do all this, every other country in the world will follow”—but that has been proved to be a load of cobblers as well. All the big people churning out all the carbon emissions are doing absolutely nothing to curb them, apart from welcoming our industry to their countries, but still we hear it, even though it has been proved wrong time after time—“If we do this, every other country will follow.”

What has actually happened in practice? While we have been ramping up the proportion that we spend on overseas aid, similar countries in the developed world have been reducing the amount they spend as a percentage of their GNI. Why have they done that? There are two possible explanations. The first is that they actually have some sense and realise that if they cannot afford to spend the money, they would have to spend less on something that is a discretionary spend—something that we might consider doing at some point.

[Alison McGovern]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Philip Davies]

I will not.

Those countries have probably also thought, “Well, this is marvellous. We don’t need to worry about spending a bit less, because the United Kingdom is taking the strain. They can do all the heavy lifting. They’re spending so much more, so we can reduce our spending.”

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. As I said at the start, we have had three hours of speeches from Members in favour of this Bill and I think the public and this House deserve to hear the viewpoint of people who do not support it. They have had plenty of time to make their case; it was just a pretty poor one.

[Alison McGovern]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is missing my point. I am not talking about gift aid on donations. I am talking about tax relief to help assist people who want to go out and do something practical themselves—who want to give up their job for a while to do something worthwhile. That would be a much more valuable and worthwhile thing for the Government to do than simply flex their muscles on how much they spend.

Because I am feeling in a generous mood, Madam Deputy Speaker, I will give way to the hon. Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern), seeing as she is so excitable about intervening.

[Alison McGovern]

That must be one of the more curious attempts I have made to intervene on the hon. Gentleman. I cannot quite work out why he has allowed me to intervene now, but as he has, perhaps I might ask him, first, if he will congratulate the last Labour Government on their actions on gift aid and recognise the impact it has had, as has been pointed out. Also, is his argument really that there is no place at all for leadership on this issue from the UK Government, never mind what other countries do? Is it correct that he believes we have no moral leadership role at all?

[Philip Davies]

Clearly the hon. Lady has not listened to a word I said. At the very start I said that I support the Government’s humanitarian aid, and I am in favour of tax relief—I am always in favour of anything that reduces the burden of taxation on people.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

I am, as always, grateful to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for your guidance. As I said at the start, we have had three hours of speeches from Members who are in favour of this Bill. As you have rightly said, I have spoken for 40 minutes in opposition. But I am a generous man, and I always seek to please you in particular. If it will please you, I will seek to draw my remarks to a close, but if you could indulge me for a couple more—[Interruption.] I could speak for a couple more hours. There is so much wrong with this Bill, we could go on for most of the day and most of the night as well.

I just want to make this point about welfare dependency. We have been doing so much to say to people here, “You cannot expect to sit back and wait for money to come to you without doing anything yourself.” In the same breath, DFID is entrenching welfare dependency abroad. Basically, it is saying to countries, “It doesn’t matter what you do with your governance or what you spend your money on; we will keep handing over the cheques come what may.”

Let us take India as an example. Why on earth are we still giving aid to India?

[Alison McGovern]

rose—

[Philip Davies]

I will not give way; I am drawing my remarks to a close. India spends $35 billion a year on defence. It is spending hundreds of millions of dollars a year on a space programme. It is even developing its own overseas aid programme, yet we are still giving £200 million to it in overseas aid. It is grotesque. I could go on and on about the waste of money that we see in DFID and the fact that it is unjustifiable to keep spending so much money. But I will take your guidance, Madam Deputy Speaker, and draw my remarks to a close.

I just want to remind Members that as Conservatives we should be judging ourselves not on how much we spend, but on how effectively we spend the money and, crucially, on whether or not we can afford to spend the money that we are handing over. We cannot afford to spend all of this money at this moment in time, but that may well change.

I reiterate the point that I made at the beginning—that anybody here today who votes for a closure motion and for this Bill to go into Committee is basically saying that this Bill is more important to them than an EU referendum Bill. They will have to answer to their constituents on that point. I will be able to look my constituents in the eye and say that I did what I thought was right. This Bill is unnecessary. What we need is an EU referendum Bill, which is why I will vote against any closure motion and against this Bill. My colleagues are in danger of falling into the trap set by the Liberal Democrats and the Labour party.

Oral Answers to Questions

Alison McGovern Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Swayne]

We are taking action now: we have deployed funds from our rapid reaction facility precisely to deal with the water issue. But in the long term, the salination and desalination has to be taken into account, and that will require a very substantial investment in the infrastructure.

[Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)]

I welcome the right hon. Gentleman to his new role and pay tribute to his predecessor. The 3,000 injured children in Gaza and the 100,000 Palestinians made homeless whom the Minister mentioned need uninterrupted help from humanitarian agencies such as the Red Cross. The situation is still urgent. What specific steps has he taken with the Foreign Office and others to encourage both Israeli and Palestinian actors to ensure safe, continuous access for those working to aid the recovery in Gaza?

[Mr Swayne]

We continually make representations to the Israelis with respect to making access easier. The hon. Lady is quite right: many of those children have life-changing injuries. The NGOs who have to negotiate access to Gaza currently incur costs of some £6 million a year to do so, and that is not acceptable.

Refugee Camps

Alison McGovern Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd July 2014 Westminster Hall

[Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your stewardship, Mr Sanders.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Mid Derbyshire (Pauline Latham) on securing this important debate, and I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting time for us to discuss the vital issue of refugees and the conditions in the camps where so many have no choice but to reside. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Meg Hillier), who spoke movingly of the camp for Congolese refugees that she saw in Rwanda. She was eloquent in speaking about the many issues that have to be faced. The hon. Member for Bradford East (Mr Ward) made important points, as did the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) in his comprehensive remarks about the serious challenges that exist. Finally, I have not visited a refugee camp, but the hon. Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman) made it clear why it is important for Members of this House to do so, and to share with us the experience of people who live in camps. I commend the work he has done on that.

There is a simple fact at the heart of today’s debate. The world’s refugee problem is growing, and that trend shows no sign of reversing. By the end of 2013, according to estimates of the UNHCR, there were more than 51 million people worldwide—almost the population of England—who had been displaced, whether by persecution, conflict, violence, or human rights violations. Over the 12 months of 2013, 1.1 million people became refugees or asylum seekers, while just 415,000 returned to their countries of origin. The net impact on the global numbers suffering displacement is clear from those figures; there is a rapid and continuing expansion. The cost and impact of that growth falls overwhelmingly on the poorest nations. Developing countries host 86% of all the world’s refugees. In the light of such figures, it is absolutely right that we should discuss what we can do both to pre-empt the process of people becoming refugees through conflict prevention and poverty alleviation, and to improve the lot of those who are already displaced—particularly the vulnerable millions scattered across the world’s refugee camps.

As has been mentioned by several Members, the terrible, unabating conflict in Syria is one of the key drivers of the upward trend in refugee numbers, as civilians forced from their home by the violence stream across the borders of neighbouring countries. Many end up in refugee camps, while others filter informally into the existing Syrian diaspora communities in those areas. More than 2.8 million refugees have fled Syria, and the vast majority are now located in Lebanon, Turkey and Jordan. There is still much to do to improve conditions for refugees housed in camps in those nations, but it is right to pay tribute to the work of the Governments of those countries, all of which have their own significant domestic issues to deal with, for their commitment to and support of hundreds of thousands of new residents.

Perhaps the starkest example of what I have described is Lebanon, which is home to more than 1.1 million Syrian refugees—a figure equivalent to a quarter of that nation’s permanent population. Given the unimaginable strain that such situations place on the often fragile and overburdened systems of health, education, employment and security in host countries, it is essential that the UK should do what it can, alongside the international community and the development sector, to support people in refugee camps.

Hon. Members have already mentioned some high-profile failings at refugee camps, and I will not describe those again. They are often due to a shortage of support, a lack of planning or a failure to learn the lessons of previous experience. In the Syrian crisis, the Zaatari camp, just across the border in Jordan, is worrying in many ways. Apparently uncapped expansion of the camp has been allowed, way beyond what local resources can support; later arrivals have been housed in makeshift, unsanitary conditions, in tents with little protection from the extremes of heat and cold of the Arabian desert. The camp sprawls over five square miles, with limited and often constrained food supplies. Security is limited, and violence—especially sexual violence—is a threat and a worry, as are health facilities that are less than we might want. There are also constraints on education provision.

However, as hon. Members have described in depth, incredible work is under way to improve the situation at Zaatari, and some of the other Syrian camps have learned the lessons. Those lessons include localising facilities around the camps rather than concentrating them in one spot, improving access and reducing potential for conflict. My right hon. Friend the shadow Secretary of State for International Development has visited the Azraq camp, which is also in Jordan. It works on the basis of villages, each with its own clinic, playgrounds and facilities, and there is accommodation in prefabricated huts housing a maximum of five refugees each. That is hardly a great home, but it is better than what passes for refugee accommodation elsewhere, as was forcefully described in the opening speeches. What is the Minister’s assessment of the effectiveness of that model, and what logistical and technical support is her Department providing to Governments in conflict-ridden areas, who suddenly find they must establish such camps, so that lessons will be learned and best practice will not go to waste?

The hon. Member for Mid Derbyshire asked, as I do, whether the Minister has had the opportunity to examine the effectiveness of top-up cards for refugees to pay for food and supplies—the shadow Secretary of State saw that in the Azraq model—instead of relying on sporadic handouts of aid.

The financial and resource strain that a sudden influx of refugees places on host nations such as Lebanon, Jordan and countries in Africa is unimaginable to us. Inevitably, with the need to provide shelter, water, food and security for hundreds of thousands of newly arrived refugees, other needs, including education, tend to be neglected by the host nations. The hon. Member for Hexham made that point well. Yet a failure to provide at least a basic education can have the most damaging long-term impact. Those who flee conflict and violence are often disproportionately young, and it is the young we are trying to remove from the violence. In Lebanon, there will soon be nearly 500,000 children of school age in camps, yet few have access to schools in the camps or in Lebanon’s towns and cities. The Lebanese Government lack the funds and teachers to provide that education safety net.

As the Syrian conflict drags on, the prospect of many children missing out completely on education rises, ingraining illiteracy and poverty. Will the Minister update us on what support her Department is providing to help to ensure that when refugee numbers are so great that they overwhelm the resources of host nations, young people, particularly those fleeing Syria, can receive at least a basic education? Will she assure us that her Department is making long-term funding available for education for young Syrian refugees, as well as supporting emergency schemes to get some basic provision in place now?

All too often, refugee situations, whether in Syria, Palestine, Somalia, South Sudan or the Central African Republic, switch from being short-term humanitarian emergencies to long-term challenges for the refugees, the host nations and the international bodies that support them. Refugee camps that were intended to be temporary become homes to hundreds of thousands of refugees for years, or even decades in the worst cases. It is crucial that we choose how to use our limited resources sensibly. The urge to give aid to tackle an emergency refugee situation is strong and often right, but we must examine carefully how that can be balanced against the long-term funding that is so necessary in refugee camps that persist for many years, to ensure that they do not become homes for the hopeless—those without education, without health care, even without the hope of moving out of extreme poverty and living their lives securely.

I pay tribute to everyone in this country who supports the City of Sanctuary movement and all UK volunteers who work to support refugees. Their work is not unnoticed, and we are very grateful for it. I again congratulate the hon. Member for Mid Derbyshire on securing this debate, and I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response to the many vital points that have been made this morning.