Refugee Crisis in Europe

Debate between Gerald Kaufman and Nigel Evans

Tuesday 8th September 2015 Commons Chamber

[Sir Gerald Kaufman (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)]

This is a grim world. Dreadful events are taking place in many countries. Innocent human beings are dying and armies and guerrillas are fighting each other throughout the world, particularly in south Asia and the middle east. Only today, we read of a 27-year-old Palestinian woman murdered by Israeli extremists, leaving her four-year-old child an orphan, yet we—not me, but the Government—will welcome to this country Binyamin Netanyahu, the author of the oppression of the Palestinians and the man who will go on trying to wreck the nuclear agreement with Iran, which is one of the few bright spots in international relations.

What was once hailed as the Arab spring has degenerated in every single country in which it appeared to be taking place: Libya is one source of the tragic and pathetic people trying to get to Europe via the Mediterranean; Egypt, an authoritarian country that tries people for exercising free speech and once an attractive country even under a dictatorship, is now worse than ever; and we have Islamic State, the terrible slaughter it has carried out and the threat to historic Palmyra. But the worst tragedy is Syria, where so many people have been killed and made refugees.

What are the Government doing? They want to bomb. Bombing will achieve nothing whatsoever, but will kill more people and create more refugees. They are now following the deplorable Obama in carrying out murder by drones, almost certainly against international law. What is their response to the heart-rending refugee swarm—that is what it is—of people fleeing horrors that, thank God, we in this country will never know. In their programme for accepting—not welcoming—refugees into this country, they have imposed not a target, but a limit, of 20,000. And now the Home Secretary, in her speech this afternoon, has said “up to 20,000”; not 20,000 or more, but up to 20,000.

[Mr Nigel Evans]

I am extremely grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way. When the refugees come to the United Kingdom, I expect them to be welcomed. I have received a number of emails from constituents saying that we need to do more, as I am sure a lot of MPs have. However, does the right hon. Gentleman not also accept that, in welcoming the number that the Government have proposed, there has to be some limit? Otherwise, what figure might he be talking about? Does he not believe that if there is no limit the huge warmth that the British people will show to the refugees may be jeopardised?

[Sir Gerald Kaufman]

That would be all very well if that was what other countries were doing too, but over the last few days alone the Germans have taken in 17,000 refugees. It may well be that Angela Merkel, creditably, is motivated by conscience and what the Germans did to the Jews. That is possible, but it is not discreditable. She is to be emulated. The French are taking a very great many more. Other countries are trying. I am not saying it is universal; I am not saying it is by any means satisfactory or creditable. But we are at the bottom of the list, and I find that deplorable, and so do our constituents. The Government, if they reach the target, which is now “up to” 20,000—the Home Secretary has the opportunity to intervene and say, “Yes, definitely 20,000”—

Cost of Living

Debate between Gerald Kaufman and Nigel Evans

Wednesday 16th May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Sir Gerald Kaufman]

rose—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. Before the right hon. Gentleman resumes his speech, I remind the House that this is not a general debate; it is a debate on the cost of living. Touching on one or two other things I will allow, but not an in-depth debate on other matters.

[Sir Gerald Kaufman]

I am grateful to you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for that reminder, and I am sorry that I was diverted by the irrelevancies of the hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert). I will simply say to him that if he is talking about higher education, it is not only university fees, but the education maintenance allowance, the withdrawal of which is depriving thousands of my young constituents of getting advanced education.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Leigh]

Will the right hon. Gentleman be too alarmed if an old reactionary like me supports him on House of Lords reform?

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Let’s not go there.

[Sir Gerald Kaufman]

The hon. Member for Gainsborough knows that I would have responded to him, but I have been banned from doing so by the Deputy Speaker, and I must maintain my cringing relationship to him.

On issues such as the cost of living, which was very much to the fore in my city, the Conservatives were obliterated in Manchester and the Liberal Democrats were massacred the week before last. One Liberal Democrat now ex-councillor in a formerly safe Liberal Democrat ward moaned at a hustings meeting that he was local and had nothing to do with the Government. But it did him no good.

The Roman historian Tacitus said of the emperor Galba, “Capax imperii nisi imperasset”, which, for those who did not have a public school education, translates as, “He would have been judged capable of government had he not governed.” Tacitus said as well, “Solitudinem faciunt pacem appellant”—“They make a wilderness and call it peace.” That will be the epitaph on this Government.