British Children: Syria

Angela Smith Excerpts
Tuesday 22nd October 2019

(4 years, 5 months ago)

Commons Chamber
Read Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Andrew Murrison Portrait Dr Murrison
- Hansard - - - Excerpts

We want to assist all vulnerable children; I hope I have made that very clear. The reason I said that I did not recognise a figure of 50 or 60 was not that I was trying to obfuscate from the Dispatch Box; it was because we genuinely do not know. It is are difficult to determine who they are and how many there are. This piece of work is ongoing, and I hope that a more benign situation in north-east Syria will assist in that process so that we will indeed be able to provide something like an individual service to those who are in the camps, particularly those who are most vulnerable and their family members. That is what we will seek to achieve, but my right hon. Friend’s point is well made.

Angela Smith Portrait Angela Smith (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (LD)
- Hansard - -

The Minister has made a great deal of his hope that the ceasefire will hold, but of course it may not. How does the Foreign Office plan to respond to the end of the ceasefire in its processes for repatriating British children?