Ukraine (Flight MH17) and Gaza

David Heath Excerpts

Monday 21st July 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

First, I agree with what the right hon. Gentleman says about the victims, and I certainly am available to have a meeting with their families and talk to them about all the concerns they have. Immediately, the concerns are the consular issues that need to be dealt with, and the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Boston and Skegness (Mark Simmonds), is doing that.

The right hon. Gentleman’s other question was about sharing intelligence, and we have already done that with the Ukrainian Government. Lots of countries have information about what happened. Russia, specifically, will have a lot of information about what happened. As I said to Putin on the telephone last night, he should make that information available, in the same way as the Americans and others have made that information available. He could probably put beyond doubt, if he wanted to, what actually happened over the skies of eastern Ukraine, and I urge him to do so.

[Mr David Heath (Somerton and Frome) (LD)]

If the gangsters in the Kremlin and their sock puppets in the Russian media do not understand the enormity of bringing down a civil aeroplane on an international route, should we not at least consider whether Russian commercial carriers are any more welcome in sovereign airspace in the civilised world?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend makes an interesting suggestion. All these issues need to be considered in the context of bringing together what Europe can do collectively to send the clearest possible message to Russia.