Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Andy Slaughter and Justine Greening

Wednesday 29th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

Britain is working with Greece, Turkey and others in Europe. The first UK team has arrived in Greece, and it includes experts in supporting vulnerable groups, such as unaccompanied asylum-seeking children, and those trained to tackle people trafficking. My hon. Friend raises an interesting point, and I will certainly take it up with my colleagues at the Home Office and the Department for Education.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

T3. Given what the Overseas Development Institute has called the misrepresentation of its recent report on the state-building grant to Palestine, will the Secretary of State take this opportunity to confirm that UK aid to the Palestinian Authority is for wholly legitimate purposes and is essential to peace-building in the region?

[Justine Greening]

I believe the hon. Gentleman is right in his assertion. Indeed, as my right hon. Friend the Minister of State has just set out, the work we are doing is helping to provide not only health facilities for people in that area but, critically, education for children who so badly need it. [Interruption.]

Humanitarian Crisis in the Mediterranean and Europe

Debate between Andy Slaughter and Justine Greening

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.