Libya

Andrew Miller Excerpts

Monday 5th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Miller (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)]

May I follow the point on migration raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart)? One thing that became clear during the previous regime was that many of the people who have ended up in Lampedusa and Malta originated not in Libya, but from other countries, sponsored by an illegal criminal network in which Gadaffi no doubt had a role. That means that such places have huge numbers of cases that are difficult to manage. How will the Prime Minister manage that situation, and will he assure the House that he will open a dialogue with the NTC to ensure that those criminal routes are closed down straight away?

[The Prime Minister]

I certainly will do that. First, it is important to get this into perspective: we should bear it in mind that we still get more asylum claims from the countries of northern Europe than we get from the countries of southern Europe. Secondly, we have a relationship with Malta. Clearly, it cannot afford to have embassies all over the world, and we use our embassies in countries such as Niger, Mali and elsewhere to try to help the Maltese to return people to their country of origin. As the hon. Gentleman says, many people coming through Libya are not from Libya.