EU Council, Security and Middle East

David Burrowes Excerpts

Monday 1st September 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

What I pushed for was further so-called tier 3 sanctions, which are real economic sanctions in the areas of finance, energy and defence. We have tasked the European Commission, within a week, to come up with a set of new proposals. What I pushed for specifically was to make sure that we start filling in some of the gaps that have been left in previous financial energy and defence sanctions. I mentioned the case of syndicated loans, where the action that has been taken on the financial front has seen the Russian stock market fall and the rouble fall, and Russia’s growth rate has now been downgraded to, I think, zero or below. So further measures on that level—which will affect Britain, but we should be prepared to take that pain—would be good.

[Mr David Burrowes (Enfield, Southgate) (Con)]

The Prime Minister spoke of a humanitarian catastrophe prompting further military action, so how would he describe what has happened to the Assyrian Christians and the Yazidis facing genocide? How much worse can it get for mothers who have been forced to throw their children off a mountainside rather than have them suffer at the hands of jihadists—suffer a fate worse than death? Will he justify why we are not using all necessary military action, including air strikes, to repel genocide?

[The Prime Minister]

Let me take, for instance, the case of the Yazidi people, where there was military action by the Kurds, supported by us, and, indeed, some military action contemplated by the Americans that would have been supported, and potentially facilitated, by us. Of course, the role we were prepared to play was to take part in a humanitarian evacuation. That would have involved British transport planes and helicopters and, indeed, British troops in the Kurdish areas of Iraq to support, maintain and look after those helicopters. So I do not accept that we will not intervene where there is a potential humanitarian crisis; we would, we will, we have in the past, but we should, as I say, ask ourselves the question, “What is in our national interest, what is the best way to proceed?”