Aleppo

Fiona Mactaggart Excerpts

Monday 28th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Ellwood]

First, may I say how grateful I am to the hon. Lady for her work in raising this matter in the House through urgent questions and by working with other colleagues as well?

I had the opportunity to meet the head of the White Helmets at the same time as the hon. Lady. He stressed his frustration that the west—indeed, the world—was not doing enough as we saw the annihilation of an historic city. It is a city that goes back to the sixth millennium. It is the financial centre of Syria, its largest city, and now condemned, almost, to ruin.

The hon. Lady touches on the letter, now with 126 signatories. I made it clear in my statement that we are looking at all options, but she must understand that, as has been repeated in this House, unilateral or even multilateral aid drops would place us in harm’s way, in what is already a complicated air environment. The question therefore has to be asked whether that is the best and safest way of getting aid to where we need it to go. We are not ruling out options, but we have to ask ourselves whether introducing British aircraft into that air environment would compound or improve matters, and whether there are other, safer ways of getting the aid in.

The hon. Lady also raises a larger point, namely what Britain and the international community are doing. She also mentioned the work of Jo Cox. We all agree in this House that Britain has the ability and the aspiration to play a significant role on the world stage. In August 2013 we had that opportunity and we blinked. We had an opportunity to hold Assad to account. As a result we have ended up with a situation where both Russia and Daesh have now come in. The question I pose to this House—

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

What are you doing now?

[Mr Ellwood]

The question I pose to this House, and to the right hon. Lady who is screaming from her seat, is that, unless this Parliament gives the Executive the support we need, our hands are tied in terms of what we can do. I therefore turn to the Labour Front-Bench team, who I think are of a different opinion to some behind them, and say that Britain wants to engage on this, but five resolutions have been vetoed at the UN Security Council by Russia, so we need to look at other opportunities. We can do that only if we have the full support of this Parliament. I hope we will get that so the Executive can lean into this challenge in the way Jo Cox would expect.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Ellwood]

My hon. Friend raises an important point. If she will allow me, I will not—especially with the Minister for the Armed Forces sitting next to me—go into the detail of how we are collecting that evidence, as that would probably be operationally unhelpful, but I will say that that is exactly what we are doing. But this may take some time; we are identifying those who are responsible, who are those in leadership positions who are giving the orders for these strikes to take place and for the siege of Aleppo to occur. We will hold these people to account.

I pay tribute to Stephen O’Brien, a former colleague in this House, who is doing a commendable job. We can all be very proud of the work he is doing to highlight the humanitarian plight in what is going on.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

I was distressed by the implication in the Minister’s remarks that those of us who voted against airstrikes in Syria were somehow responsible for his decision not to put forward airdrops for aid. Frankly, at that point, we were not convinced that the balance of harms was being sorted in the right way. I think if he was today to call for a vote of this House, those who, like me, opposed military strikes on Syria would strongly support any action that can get humanitarian aid to those starving communities. I know that he is talking about this, but what is he actually going to do to get this aid to the people who are starving?

[Mr Ellwood]

All actions should be taken through the UN, as it is the conduit that can be deemed as neutral by the Syrian regime and, indeed, by Russia. I hope the right hon. Lady will understand how our turning up and starting to do these airdrops ourselves would change the dynamics of our involvement in the air in a difficult terrain. That is not to say we do not rule it out; I am just saying that it is a more complicated scenario.

The UN does conduct its own airdrops—it has that capability; it has a facility to do so—but it only does that where it has the permission of the Syrian regime for those flights to take place. That is the important point.

On the right hon. Lady’s latter point, I am sorry that this Government did not do more to win people like her across. That was our failure as much as anybody else’s, and that, more than anything, is what we need to learn from what happened in August 2013.