Ugandan School Attack

Drew Hendry Excerpts

Tuesday 20th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the SNP spokesperson.

[Drew Hendry (Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey) (SNP)]

This is a shocking terrorist crime, and I put on record my party’s condolences to the families of those murdered in this horrific attack. I congratulate the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) on bringing attention to this crime, which has had too little of that.

The people who carried out this atrocity are not an unknown group. They have already been proscribed as a terrorist organisation by Uganda and the United States of America. When will the UK Government finally join those countries in proscribing them too? What will the UK Government do to support Uganda in response to this attack and to the ongoing threats that clearly exist there?

Lasting solutions can only be achieved by Governments in this region with outside support investing in peacebuilding and civic society building. Military cannot be the only option, so does the Minister agree that it would be a mistake to continue cutting aid in the sub-Saharan area and, indeed, worldwide?

[Mr Mitchell]

On the hon. Gentleman’s final point, we are deploying very large amounts of British taxpayers’ money in the area, as he suggests, and we are ensuring that we are light on our feet and using that to good humanitarian effect. If he looks at some of the programmes I have announced recently, he will see that they directly affect the humanitarian position, particularly for girls and women.

In respect of what Britain is doing to try to ensure greater security in the eastern DRC and on the border to which the hon. Gentleman refers, although we never discuss proscription and other security measures in advance, he may rest assured that the British Government are fully engaged, not least through the Nairobi peace process, in doing anything that we can to bring back stability to this very troubled part of the world.