Syria

Andrew Mitchell Excerpts

Tuesday 24th July 2018 Commons Chamber

[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.

[Mr Andrew Mitchell (Sutton Coldfield) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for granting this urgent question, which the hon. Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern) so eloquently set out.

It is clear that there is a further catastrophe looming for the millions of people who live in Idlib. As the Minister said, the UK Government have the outstanding record on supporting those caught up in this catastrophe through humanitarian relief. Will the Minister assure the House that, with others, he will continue to liaise and seek assistance not only for the hundreds of thousands of brave people caught up in this looming crisis, but in particular for the many very brave humanitarian workers and actors who have often put their lives on the line to support those caught up in this situation? As with the work done with the Israeli Government, they urgently need to be able to rely on the international community to help them specifically in the coming days and weeks.

[Sir Alan Duncan]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. He of course was at the forefront of the initial aid effort in Syria, when he was Secretary of State for International Development and I was his hard-worked minion in that Department, at the beginning of the conflict. He is absolutely right that we have to maintain access for humanitarian efforts. We have so far committed £2.71 billion in response to this crisis. We have provided over 27 million food rations, 12 million medical consultations, 10 million relief packages and over 10 million vaccines. We are going to continue with our efforts. At the Brussels conference in April, we pledged to provide at least £450 million this year and a further £300 million next year to help to alleviate the extreme suffering in Syria and to provide vital support to neighbouring countries, which have taken up so much of the consequential effects of this horrid conflict.