Libya and the Middle East

Alun Cairns Excerpts

Monday 28th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend makes a good point, although we should not be pessimistic about the effect of greater democratisation in the middle east and the Arab world on the prospects for Arab-Israeli peace. Some of the more autocratic regimes use the Arab-Israel conflict as a way of keeping their own populations happy without having democracy. So, yes, the road between here and there may be quite bumpy and difficult, but in the end, deals between democracies will be stronger.

[Alun Cairns (Vale of Glamorgan) (Con)]

My constituent, Richard Foscolo, was stranded in the desert in Ghani in an oilfield. He returned home last Friday. Initial contact with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office was naturally difficult, partly because of the circumstances on the ground, but the family feel particularly let down by his employers, OPS International, which did not make all the information available to the embassy or to the FCO, so that co-ordination could be brought about effectively. What action will the Prime Minister take to ensure that information is shared as efficiently as possible?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend makes a good point, and there are lessons to learn about how information is shared. It is a difficult and ever-changing picture. Let us just look at the numbers of people who we think are in Libya and who want to come out. Even in the age of the internet, the mobile phone, computer databases and the rest of it, getting a real grip of those numbers, as I believe we now have—we will go on publishing more granular information about that—is difficult, but companies working with the Government is clearly an essential part of that process.