Humanitarian Crisis in the Mediterranean and Europe

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Wednesday 9th September 2015 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

I will follow up that point. I pay tribute to the work that the Home Secretary did over the summer with her French counterpart to try to work collaboratively to find a resolution to the problem in Calais.

I have talked about some of the challenges closer to our doorstep here in Europe in recent weeks and months, but we should not lose sight of the fact that we have also needed to and been right to help the overwhelming majority of Syrians who are still in the region. I have met many refugees from the Syrian crisis in my time in this role and I am proud that Britain has played a leading role in the humanitarian response to the crisis. We have pledged more than £1 billion to date, the largest ever response from the UK to any humanitarian crisis, which gives a sense of how complex, wide-ranging and challenging the Syrian crisis is. That is also the biggest bilateral country support for the Syrian crisis, other than that from the US.

The picture inside Syria today is unspeakably bleak. We have debated, discussed and had questions about the Syrian crisis in this Chamber many times and it seems almost impossible that it can continue to get worse, but it does. For four years the people of Syria have been bombed, starved and driven from their homes. I have met children in the Zaatari camp in a little classroom where they can play and spend time with one another, but when they hear a supply plane overhead delivering supplies to the camp they dive for cover under the table because they are used to planes that are about to bomb them. I have met children in classrooms that Britain is helping to fund, with teachers whom we are helping to do double shifts so that they can teach not only their own Jordanian and Lebanese children but find time in the school day to accommodate the Syrian children who are now living locally. I have seen the pictures those children draw when they are asked to do art, and they are pictures of their homes having been bombed, of planes with bombs and of their friends having been bombed. Those children deserve the support of the United Kingdom and they are getting that support.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

I do not think that any Opposition Member is criticising what the Government are doing, but what the Government are not doing, which includes their duty as a member of the European Union in respect of migrants in Europe. May I also raise the issue of refugees from Daesh in Iraq? We have a duty in Iraq and Yazidis, Christians and Muslims have had to flee in very similar circumstances. Will the Secretary of State extend the vulnerable persons relocation scheme to refugees in Iraq who cannot be catered for by the Iraqi Government?

[Justine Greening]

The hon. Gentleman is right to point out that Britain is playing our role in dealing with crises that go far more broadly across the middle east than the Syrian conflict. I can reassure him that we are working specifically to try to ensure that we support children who are part of the many millions of displaced people in Iraq. Let me give the House some sense of that, although I know that I need to make some progress with my speech. We are providing not only the medical assistance that they will often need but trauma counselling. That is not uncomplicated as the specialised support the children need and the language capability required of the people providing it are not easy to access, but we are part of ensuring that that is done as far as it possibly can be. We are providing and helping to fund safe areas within camps so that unaccompanied children and parents who have lost their children can easily link up with them again. More than 80% of unaccompanied children in Jordan have managed to be linked up with their families through such efforts. Out of sight, we are working incredibly hard in a range of areas, particularly to help children affected by the crisis. We will keep doing that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

The Government are correct to emphasise what they are getting right: the 0.7% of gross national income spent on development, the £1 billion allocated to relief around Syria, and, indeed, the 20,000 refugees who will now be welcomed to Britain—although I believe that, without the public pressure, that would not have happened. However, as the motion says, it is too little, and it is misconceived to look at a five-year period when the immediate crisis is now and we do not know what the crisis will be in five years’ time.

I hope that Members will understand if I choose to concentrate on what the Government are not getting right at the moment. There is a rigidity in their approach, a desire to hold the line at the concessions that they have made so far. I do not think that that does any service either to the refugees or to our reputation internationally.

Three points particularly troubled me in the statements made in this debate and yesterday’s debate and the Prime Minister’s statement on Monday. The first—this goes to the heart of the motion—is the idea that we should opt out of the crisis in Europe and look only at the situation in the camps bordering Syria. Yesterday my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) referred to her experience of helping out at a refugee station in Kos earlier this summer, and the conditions she described there are at least as bad as those in the camps in Lebanon or Jordan. Some 50,000 refugees arrived in Greece in one month, and we know that Greece simply cannot cope. We are dodging our responsibility as a European nation and EU member. It is not fair to draw a line at the channel, and to be one of only three of the 27 EU countries not prepared to act collectively. I fear that this is more to do with the internal politics of the Conservative party or indeed European referendum politics. It is frankly embarrassing to hear refugees speaking in English in European countries about the German Chancellor and the people of Germany as their salvation when for centuries our country has been the leading light for Europe in providing refuge to those who are dispossessed.

Secondly, while understanding the priority given to Syria where the refugee crisis is worse than anywhere else, the Government are wrong and illogical to limit the relief simply to those who are refugees in Syria. I refer specifically here to the situation in the north of Iraq. It cannot be lost on anyone who has listened to the Prime Minister or the Defence Secretary that the Government see little or no difference between the causes of the refugee crisis in Iraq and that in Syria, and in particular the role of Daesh in terrorising and persecuting anybody who does not adhere to its perverted fanaticism.

The Yazidi, Shi’a, Christian and many Sunni citizens of Mosul and the occupied areas have suffered terribly at the hands of Daesh and thousands have fled, principally to Kurdish-controlled regions. Despite the hospitality and military protection afforded by the Kurdish people, the plight of these refugees is desperate. Many countries including France—including even Australia—have recognised this; Britain has not.

In particular, the vulnerable persons relocation scheme has not been extended to Iraq. This has been a completely inadequate scheme so far—only 250-odd people have benefited from it—but I am hopeful in the light of the Prime Minister’s announcement that it will now function. It should, however, function for Iraqi refugees from Daesh as well, not least because there are a quarter of a million Syrian refugees in Iraq as well as in other surrounding countries. I hope the Prime Minister and the Minister responding today will deal with that point. The Prime Minister certainly did not do so when I asked him the question on Monday and he said that Iraq has a Government. That is perhaps literally true, but it is no comfort for those refugees, and I am afraid the Secretary of State has not answered the point either. Nor have I had a response to my letter to the Foreign Secretary on this subject of 7 August. It would be nice to receive one.

I declare an interest thus far in that the Iraqi Catholic community in the UK is based at Holy Trinity church in Brook Green in my constituency, and it is a settled, prosperous community who would wish to welcome their relatives who are currently suffering so greatly. However, I do not make a special case for Christian refugees any more than for Muslim or those of any other religion or of none; we have a duty to refugees in Iraq as much as to those in Syria. My constituents in Hammersmith—46% of whom were, at the time of the last census, born outside the UK—absolutely understand not only our moral obligation but the wealth of experience and indeed the economic power of refugees, and that refugees have in great part made this country what it is today. This is an act of generosity, but it is also an act of self-interest. I cannot see that that is inconsistent and that is why I find the Government’s actions surprising.

The third and potentially most troubling point is the Government’s conflation of military action and the refugee crisis, which we heard in the Prime Minister’s statement on Monday. I agree with the Prime Minister that we have to address the long-term causes of the refugee crisis, and that requires a stable Government in Syria which means not only Daesh but Assad have to go. The UK can assist in that process in many ways, but the lesson of recent history is that military action by western powers is unlikely to do so. If we have not understood that from Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, we certainly should have done. That is why I have grave concerns about what the Prime Minister said in the second part of his statement. We are very far from establishing the legality of the drone strike that was reported, either under article 51 or indeed under the common law of self-defence. The Prime Minister certainly mentioned necessity and proportionality in his statement, but he did not mention the imminence of the threat.

Issues about the chronology of that event have come to light since. A number of former Directors of Public Prosecutions, Attorney Generals, non-governmental organisations, such as Reprieve, and leading Members of both Houses have expressed concerns. As the Prime Minister conceded in answering questions on Monday, it is a significant change of policy, so the House deserves an explanation. If we are moving to a shoot-to-kill policy and towards the tactics adopted by the Israeli and US military, the House has the right to know. At the very least, we need an investigation, either by the Foreign Affairs Committee or, indeed, by the Intelligence and Security Committee, in so far as these matters need to be confidential; but we also need the Law Officers to come to the House to explain the legal principles, to explain what their role has been, to explain what their advice has been so far, to explain what the process for that decision making has been and to say what their role would be if any further action were contemplated.

The Government do not have a mandate for military action in Syria—quite the contrary. The House made its view abundantly clear two years ago. The Prime Minister said that he got it at that point. I suspect that the reverse is true and that, in fact, he has been looking to reverse that policy ever since.

[Mrs Moon]

Does my hon. Friend share my concern about mission creep in Syria? We have just had a drone strike, killing British citizens, but before that, we were told that British pilots were taking part in missions over Syria, again with no authority from this country, but on the basis that they were embedded with other forces, which has never happened before.

[Andy Slaughter]

My hon. Friend, who is an expert in these matters, anticipated that my next word was going to be “embedded”. I am afraid that we have seen the hand of both public opinion and the House being forced by actions taken—first, British forces being embedded and the substantial increase in drone activity generally. Perhaps 40% of drone activity in the region is now over Syria. Now, of course, the drone strike has been reported. This is a way to pre-empt a decision that, no doubt, the House will debate in the autumn. These actions will have a direct impact on the refugee situation.

My final point is on the illogicality—this seems to be lost particularly among Government Members—of now deciding to take military action against Daesh. The main beneficiary of that will be Assad. However horrific and disgusting the actions of Daesh have been, the fact remains that the majority of abductions, torture and murders of civilians and the destruction of Syria’s infrastructure are the responsibility of the Assad regime. In the past month, 1,600 barrel bombs were dropped by that regime. While we are attacking Daesh, we are making Assad stronger. Of course both need to be tackled. Of course a co-ordinated response is needed. That has been singularly lacking, and that is one of the roots of the refugee crisis. but I would regret seeing the Government rush to arms when they are so tardy in addressing their humanitarian duties.