Yemen

Anna Turley Excerpts

Tuesday 11th September 2018 Commons Chamber

[Anna Turley (Redcar) (Lab/Co-op)]

The right hon. Gentleman is being generous with his time and is making some powerful points. Will he join me in urging our Government to support the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, who said last week:

“It is crucial that there be…international and independent investigations into all allegations of violations of international humanitarian law”?

We know that such violations are happening, and we need an international investigation. Will the British Government please do that?

[Mr Mitchell]

The hon. Lady is right on that point, not because a Saudi-led investigation will necessarily be false, but it simply will not be trusted. If I may use a wholly inappropriate analogy, people will think that the Saudis are marking their own homework. It would therefore be much better to have an international investigation.

The Minister agrees that the Saudis are on a hiding to nothing, so surely it is the duty of the Saudis’ friends and allies to move them to a better place. Some time ago, the British Government took a judgment through the National Security Council that our economic and security relationship with Saudi Arabia took precedence over everything else. I believe that that judgment is now fundamentally flawed, because both our economic and security relationships are being greatly damaged by what is happening in Yemen.

In trying to persuade the Government that we need to move to a position of much greater neutrality, using our power and influence at the United Nations, I hope that the Minister, who understands such things, will reiterate today the importance of supporting without qualification the work of Martin Griffiths, a distinguished British international civil servant, as he tries to move this whole awful experience from fighting to a ceasefire and then to talks. My understanding is that the reason why the Houthis were not in Geneva was that there were no adequate guarantees of safe passage, and Martin Griffiths has specifically said that he wishes to address that point and ensure that the next round of talks, to which he is absolutely committed, are more inclusive and therefore more comprehensive.

The important thing is that we move to a ceasefire and to talks. The talks will be difficult, halting and slow, but as the extremely impressive work of the UN group of eminent experts on Yemen has so clearly stated, the present position is the worst of all worlds for all involved. We must now get a ceasefire and move to talks, which are the route through to the end of this dreadful catastrophe.

Yemen

Anna Turley Excerpts

Tuesday 24th April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Harriett Baldwin]

My hon. Friend is correct to point out that it is thought that the missiles being fired into Saudi Arabia from Yemeni territory are predominantly being supplied by Iran. I reiterate that the UK is trying to work with the United Nations to prevent that and to prevent use of the routes that might be being used to supply those weapons. It is important that all parties call on those supplying the arms to cease.

[Anna Turley (Redcar) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Minister referred to the fact that Saudi Arabia is going to conduct an inquiry into the tragic events of the weekend, but surely the British Government should now support a fully independent United Nations-led investigation into violations of human rights on both sides in Yemen?

[Harriett Baldwin]

We welcome the fact that the Saudi-led coalition has committed to an investigation, and it is important for that to be published in the very near future.

Syria: De-escalation Zones

Anna Turley Excerpts

Monday 26th February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Boris Johnson]

As the hon. Gentleman will know, after the Khan Shaykhun episode and the work of the joint investigative mechanism to establish almost certainly the culprits behind that chemical weapons attack, Russia has, alas, vetoed any further such activity by the OPCW. Again, it comes back to the Russians and the question that they must ask themselves, which is what kind of international actor they want to be and how they want to be regarded by the world.

[Anna Turley (Redcar) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Foreign Secretary has said that a peaceful solution is possible if the political will exists. What if the political will does not exist? If chemical attacks, including the use of chlorine gas after a ceasefire, are not this country’s red line, will he tell us what is?

[Boris Johnson]

I do not wish to go back over the points that I have already made this afternoon about the red line that was, alas, crossed in 2013. Where there is incontrovertible evidence of chemical weapons attacks by the Syrian regime, with the connivance of the Russians, then—to answer the question that has been posed many times—the people responsible for those attacks should be held to account. By the way, it was as a result of UK lobbying and the activities of this Government that after the Khan Shaykhun attack we listed several members of the Assad military and imposed new sanctions on Syria. That is the way forward. To get to the question asked by the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman), in the end it will be the fear of prosecution, sanctions and being prosecuted for war crimes that will have the most powerful effect on the imagination of these individuals.

Aleppo/Syria: International Action

Anna Turley Excerpts

Programme motion: House of Commons
Tuesday 13th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Anna Turley (Redcar) (Lab/Co-op)]

There is no doubt that the civilian atrocities taking place at the hands of Assad and Putin in Aleppo are among the worst that we have witnessed in decades. As a teenager watching the horrors of Rwanda or Srebrenica, I used to think, “Why don’t they do something?” Well, “they” are now us, and what are we doing? We have turned our face away. It is three years since this place voted not to respond to Assad’s use of chemical weapons on his own people. It is 15 months since little Alan Kurdi was found face down on a beach in Turkey. It is a year since we rightly voted to take action on ISIS in the east of Syria and nine months since Jo Cox was granted an urgent question on breaches of the then ceasefire. It is two weeks since we stood here and discussed aid drops and safe passage. What have we actually done to save a single civilian life in Aleppo? Nothing.

We are watching a fascist dictator, backed by a corrupt global power, use chemical weapons and barrel bombs against his own people for daring to want a better life and a better Government. Have we turned away because of more important local issues or because of the siren call to first look after our own? When we talk of “our own”, that should not stop at our constituency boundaries or, I am afraid, at the white cliffs of Dover. All humanity is “our own” and we have a responsibility and a duty to act. We are not so poor as a nation, financially or morally, that we should turn our backs on what we see on distant shores, not least because it will eventually find its way to us, whether in the form of terror on our own streets or refugee families seeking sanctuary in our estates. We cannot be frozen by the guilt surrounding well-intentioned military action of the past, as the right hon. Member for Tatton (Mr Osborne) so eloquently said. If we are left disappointed or ashamed by difficult and lengthy struggles in Iraq, we must learn the right lessons, which are there in black and white in Chilcot, that when the potential for military action arises we should not commit until it is clear that it can be achieved. We should properly prepare for what comes afterwards and work better with regional partners. Those are the lessons to learn. We should not turn our backs and leave innocent citizens to the bombs and chemicals of despots.

The world is getting smaller by the day and we must play our part in it. We must decide what that part is and what duty we owe to humanity. That duty now looks to be two things. First, as we have heard today, we must get people out immediately. Medics, children, mums—citizens—are trapped and we have to evacuate them as soon as possible. We must get humanitarian aid in as a matter of emergency. We have to urge international action to call an immediate ceasefire. As the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) said, we must identify the war crimes and bring people to account. Secondly, we must pledge never again to turn our backs, never again to be ground down or put off by the length or difficulty of the struggle, never to give in to moral equivalence between brutal fascist dictatorships and a people’s struggle for self-determination and freedom. We must pledge never to be so determinedly full of self-indulgent self-loathing for the west that we do not believe that we can play a positive role for the good of the world. Never again should we lack a sense of responsibility to humanity, wherever it is and however hard the struggle.

--- Later in debate ---

[Boris Johnson]

That comes a little ill from a Labour Member because the right hon. Gentleman remembers fine well that the Labour party was whipped to oppose any action in 2013.

I want to return to the current situation because Members have asked some very reasonable questions that I think I must answer.

[Anna Turley]

Will the Foreign Secretary give way?

Aleppo

Anna Turley Excerpts

Monday 28th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Ellwood]

I touched on that earlier. There is a choice: whether we look after refugees in this country—as we have done for the thousands that are coming this way—or we provide support in the region. The price of looking after one refugee in the UK equates to looking after around 20 refugees in the region. Different standards, absolutely, but I hope the hon. Lady recognises that with £2.3 billion-worth of support, we are playing our part in the region.

[Anna Turley (Redcar) (Lab/Co-op)]

Like many colleagues, I pay tribute to all our armed forces in service around the world, and I know that no one in this House would ever put them in harm’s way unless there was no alternative. What alternatives is the Minister considering, such as drones or unmanned aircraft, to carry out airdrops? I can think of few other clear-cut humanitarian crises in my lifetime that deserve intervention by the British armed forces in order to save the lives of innocent children at risk from barrel bombs, chemical warfare and starvation.

[Mr Ellwood]

We want to use our influence with our allies and others to work across not just the military aspect, if our military were used, to provide the necessary humanitarian relief, but in the diplomatic corridors to get a political solution. We are not looking at one particular area, but trying to work across the piece.