Syria

Alison McGovern Excerpts

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.

Oral Answers to Questions

Alison McGovern Excerpts

Tuesday 15th May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Alistair Burt]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. I met the director of the Independent, Impartial and International Mechanism recently, and we have been offering help and technical support through legal services in the United Kingdom. There should be absolutely no distinction between those who have committed such crimes.

[Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)]

As the Minister and other hon. Members have said, accountability for war crimes in Syria is crucial, but so is prevention. How can we stop the bombing of hospitals?

[Alistair Burt]

Again, I wish there were a simple answer to such an honest and direct question. Without physically intervening and without a physical no-fly zone, which has been considered but would be immensely difficult to implement, the best thing we can do at present is to draw attention to such attacks on facilities—sometimes with information that has been given in all good faith to authorities to keep these places safe— support the work of the doctors and those involved in humanitarian expertise, and make clear that this is happening. It has no place in warfare. It has no place in the modern world. Hopefully, those responsible will ultimately be held accountable.

Yemen

Alison McGovern Excerpts

Tuesday 24th April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Harriett Baldwin]

My hon. Friend raises a very important detail. The UK has great expertise in maritime matters, and we have deployed experts to Djibouti to help with that inspection process. In fact, UK support has helped to increase the proportion of ships that have been physically inspected by almost 10 times, from 8% to 77%.

[Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)]

May I press the Minister a little further? She gave a long answer a moment ago to my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Richard Burden) about a UN Security Council resolution. Exactly when can we expect to see one?

[Harriett Baldwin]

The UK led the drafting in March of the United Nations Security Council presidential statement, and as I understand it, that statement, which calls on all parties to comply with their obligations under international humanitarian law and to facilitate humanitarian access, and emphasises the need for an inclusive political solution, was widely supported.

Oral Answers to Questions

Alison McGovern Excerpts

Tuesday 20th February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Alistair Burt]

The hon. Gentleman is right to express concern and anger not only about the use of chemical weapons but about their increasing use. We think that they have been used on perhaps four occasions since the turn of this year. If the use of chemical weapons once again becomes the norm in war, that will go against a century of a united response against them by the world. I took part in the recent conference in Paris led by the French Foreign Minister and the United States Secretary of State to counter activities in the UN, where the joint investigative mechanism has been vetoed on three occasions, by trying to create some other mechanism. We will continue to work through the UN to ensure that the international convention on chemical weapons once again becomes properly effective.

[Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for his responses on this subject, but 2018 has proved to be an absolutely brutal year so far for Syrian civilians. What can we do? We can put in place monitoring in that country. Will the Minister tell us a little more about what UK Government resources are available for monitoring and collecting evidence of these terrible crimes?

[Alistair Burt]

Since the beginning of the conflict in Syria, the UK has been working to equip civilians on the ground with the tools they need to collect evidence that can be used to ensure accountability and justice. We have been doing that work for some years, and we will continue to do it. The hon. Lady has called attention to the increased use of chemical weapons in the past few weeks, which is an outrage. The world community is entitled to be outraged by it, and we must ensure that, through the UN, we do something effective to bring the perpetrators to justice.

Zimbabwe

Alison McGovern Excerpts

Wednesday 15th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Boris Johnson]

My hon. Friend brings a wealth of experience to this subject, and he is absolutely right. The message I am trying to get over to the House this afternoon is that we should not jump the gun; we should not jump to conclusions about exactly how things are going to turn out in the course of the next few days, or even hours. My hon. Friend is extremely sensible to urge caution.

[Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)]

Thank you for granting this urgent question, Mr Speaker.

My constituent Petronella Mahachi, originally from Zimbabwe, came to see me only on Friday, and has asked me to ask the Foreign Secretary about the forthcoming elections. What practical steps will the UK be taking to ensure that they are free and fair, especially in respect of the participation of international bodies that can guarantee the security and democracy of those elections?

Raqqa and Daesh

Alison McGovern Excerpts

Tuesday 24th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Alistair Burt]

I thank my hon. Friend for her kind remarks. I was pleased recently to have the honour of moving the resolution at the UN, which was adopted unanimously by the Security Council, to further the work commenced the year before by the Iraqi Foreign Minister to bring to justice those responsible for the crimes of Daesh and to institute an investigative process to help that work. The United Kingdom will support that work and see the resolution carried through. I met Staffan de Mistura in New York and he is hopeful that the Geneva process will restart in November. There is clearly a long way to go, but an absence of conflict will help that process. It is essential that a process of justice emerges from the political conversations in which the people of Syria have the chance to choose their leadership, and that they do not have one imposed on them.

[Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)]

The Minister has said some helpful things today, not least about the cost of inaction possibly being as great as the cost of action—a point made forcefully in the paper written by the hon. Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom Tugendhat) and Jo Cox, “The Cost of Doing Nothing”. Does the Minister agree that it is vital that those who have committed war crimes in Syria are brought to justice? Will he update the House on the British Government’s role in making sure that the Syrian Government, who have prosecuted a brutal campaign and bombed hospitals, are brought to justice in whatever way possible?

[Alistair Burt]

I hope it will please the hon. Lady if I tell her that while I was in New York I met the leader of the White Helmets, along with members of the opposition. We give enormous credit to them for what they have achieved, and to the work of the hon. Lady and others in supporting them.

On bringing people to justice, it is clear that those who are responsible for war crimes in any circumstances—whether they belong to Daesh or the regime—should feel that justice is available against them. The process against Daesh is clear; I suspect that the process against the regime will be more difficult, but if there is evidence, it should be prosecuted and pursued. The United Kingdom will be determined to see that process carried through, although I do not suspect for a moment that it will be particularly easy.

Oral Answers to Questions

Alison McGovern Excerpts

Tuesday 11th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Boris Johnson]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. He is of course right. Iraq is an ethnically divided and religiously divided country. We must make sure that everybody feels properly represented in the new constitution, and devolution to Mosul is certainly an option that we will be exploring.

[Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)]

Further to the question asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Barrow and Furness (John Woodcock), before the Foreign Secretary meets the all-party friends of Syria group, will he discuss a comprehensive strategy to protect civilians with the Department for International Development and the Ministry of Defence so that we can have a proper joined-up strategy at last?

[Boris Johnson]

I can tell the hon. Lady that that is already happening.

Syria and North Korea

Alison McGovern Excerpts

Tuesday 18th April 2017 Commons Chamber

[Boris Johnson]

I fully appreciate the point my hon. Friend makes and he is perfectly right when he says that our thoughts should equally be with the 126 victims of that appalling attack, many of whom were children, as the right hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury said. There are many, many victims in this conflict, but the overwhelming majority of the 400,000 who have died in the past five or six years—I believe this war is now in its seventh year—have been victims of the Assad regime and its supporters. For that reason, I must say to my hon. Friend that I understand his hesitations, which are of course shared by many people, who think instinctively that perhaps it would be better to stay with the devil we know, but this is a very, very odious devil indeed, and as I look ahead I just cannot see how Bashar al-Assad can remain in power in Syria in the long term. We have to go back a long way in history to find somebody who has murdered quite so many of his population and retained office.

[Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)]

I thank the Foreign Secretary for his statement. Of course, it is not for any of us in this House to decide who runs Syria; that is a choice for the Syrian people.

We should judge recent events in Syria as being successful only if they form part of a comprehensive strategy to protect civilian life. What conversations has the Foreign Secretary had with the Secretary of State for International Development about getting the aid that we as a country have paid for to those who need it in Syria? Thanks to you, Mr Speaker, we were able to call for such action for Aleppo, but we failed. Now, people in Idlib are being targeted in a way that we have discussed in this House previously. What strategy do we have to save civilian lives, to get aid in, to get people out of Syria so that they can receive medical attention, and to help to save each and every life that we can?

[Boris Johnson]

I pay tribute to the hon. Lady’s consistent campaigning on this issue over the years. She is right to draw attention to the appalling humanitarian situation. Around 1.5 million people are still being besieged by Assad’s regime, which is using starvation as an instrument of warfare. On what we are trying to do, I go back to my earlier points: there must be a ceasefire and the Russians must make it possible for the humanitarian convoys to access the people who need help. That is what we are trying to promote, not only in Geneva but at the Astana talks. It is up to the Russians. We can build the exit for them, and I think it is an attractive exit: they have the chance to get long-term western support for the rebuilding of Syria; they would have their strategic interests in Syria—at Tartus and Latakia—protected in the long term; and they could have a political role in Syria’s future, but they have to ensure that there is a ceasefire, an end to the barrel bombs and a proper political process.

US Immigration Policy

Alison McGovern Excerpts

Monday 30th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Boris Johnson]

I am glad my hon. Friend has pointed that out. I had alluded to it in an elliptical way, but it is right that the House should be aware of that discrimination and the ban that exists. By the way, the House should reflect on the fact that all immigration and visa policies are by their nature discriminatory as between individuals and nations.

[Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)]

The Foreign Secretary is right about one thing: we have lots of friends in America. I stand with our friends there today who are standing up against this ban, which affects Muslims and others from those countries, but may I turn the Foreign Secretary’s attention back to the humanitarian cause in the middle east? Many of those affected will have been striving to save lives in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere. What contact has he had with humanitarian leaders to ensure that they can travel to the United States if they need to do so?

[Boris Johnson]

What I can say about the conversations we have had so far is that, where people have diplomatic or political reasons to travel, or if they are travelling because they are aid workers, there should be expeditious systems for ensuring that they get through fast. That also applies to some of the people who are resident in this country but do not have either dual or UK nationality.

Changes in US Immigration Policy

Alison McGovern Excerpts

Monday 30th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Colchester (Will Quince), who made an excellent contribution. I, too, want to praise my right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband) and the hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi). Both of them do their families very proud. I know that the hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon spoke on behalf of all those in our country who have ever travelled abroad and felt that sinking feeling as they approached the immigration desk. It is not something we speak a lot about, but I know, sadly, that it is a common phenomenon. There will be people the hon. Gentleman will never meet, but who will feel comforted by the words he has said this evening. I want to make three brief points on Muslims in this country; on the importance of Syria and Iraq in the middle east; and on populism.

My hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Luciana Berger) made a very moving intervention earlier about Holocaust Memorial Day, and on the poignancy and horror of what we witnessed over the weekend. The hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw (Marion Fellows) said that her own contribution would matter very little, but I profoundly disagree. What I have observed over this weekend is an outpouring of distress and dismay from all quarters. Of course, British Muslims will feel this most keenly, but all of us in this country—whatever our background, whatever our faith, or of no faith—stand with them whether they are British Iraqis, British Syrians, British Somalians or British people who are descendants from the affected countries. I say this to our friends in America: we are Brits, all equal, and we will not be divided on the basis of our faith or wherever we have come from.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Rushanara Ali) also spoke very movingly earlier. If anyone is questioning, wondering or thinking about whether these events have an effect on Muslims in this country, I would encourage them to listen to the tone of this debate. It is incumbent on all of us, Muslim or not, to stand shoulder to shoulder in solidarity and in the best traditions of my party, and show them our support.

That is particularly true for those who have been working recently on issues connected with Syria. When I heard about these events over the weekend, my first thought was for the brave and brilliant people whom I have had the honour to come to know as part of our campaign to protect human life in Syria. Many of them are Syrian nationals and would have good cause to want to travel to the United States in order to make representations on behalf of that humanitarian cause for vulnerable people in Syria. Where does this order now leave them?

I would like to ask the Minister for Europe and the Americas—I do not feel that the Foreign Secretary gave a very substantial answer to my earlier point—what representations the Foreign Office has made to the Americans about the need for those representing humanitarian causes to be allowed access to America. That applies whether they are Syrian nationals, Iraqi nationals or even US nationals who will now no doubt face equal trouble accessing places in Iraq, Syria and other areas affected by this ban. We should ask ourselves this simple question: does this Executive order help or hinder peace and security efforts in that troubled region? I think that the answer to that question is glaringly obvious and staring us in the face: it is a total disaster for peace and security in that region.

I understand that a gentleman who played a particular role in the referendum campaign has recently gone on the radio to say that this is just the cause of “loony lefties”. To those commentators who say, “Donald Trump is a perfectly fairly elected President of the United States who is entitled to do this”, I say that this issue will affect the security of each and every one of us, including some of the most vulnerable people on our planet, and it cannot stand.

Finally, on populism, the past year has been very difficult. I always believe that we should look to the future and think about what our values tell us about how to approach the modern world as it is, not as it once was, but unfortunately I feel that what we are witnessing in our world is an old, old story—that in times of economic trouble, there are always forces in our world, who I think of as the far right and the hard right, who want to turn up and tell ordinary working people in America, Europe or wherever and say, “No, your troubles and your wages failing to rise are not the fault of the economic system or Governments or companies or anyone else; they are the fault of people who are just like you, but happen to be Polish; they are the fault of people who are just like you, but happen to be Muslim; they are the fault of people who are just like you, but happen to be from another part of the world.”

That tendency and the susceptibility of people to want to believe an easy story when the truth is much more complicated is always exploited by the purveyors of hate. Those of us who stand against that cannot give in to populism. We cannot kow-tow to prejudice; we cannot say, “Yes, you are probably right, so let us try to do what you want.” We have to be very clear with people that we are all, underneath it all, fundamentally the same. We need the same ability to work together, to learn together and to have hospitals for when we are sick; it does not matter where people come from, they need the same things in life. No amount of populist rhetoric designed to divide us and make us fight each other rather than work together will change that.