Humanitarian Crisis in the Mediterranean and Europe

Debate between Hywel Williams and Richard Graham

Wednesday 9th September 2015 Commons Chamber

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for calling me to talk about an issue that defines this summer and probably a longer period.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Moray (Angus Robertson) on tabling a motion on this humanitarian issue, which is vital not just to all of us here, but to many of our constituents. I would argue that the underlying issue is broader than that laid out in his motion. Why are there so many failing states in the middle east and north Africa? How can we help to prevent those states from reaching the chaos where so many millions of people are displaced, mostly outside their own country? What is it that states such as Jordan and Morocco have that makes them so much more successful? How can a region take ownership both of its people, as Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey are doing so spectacularly with help from the west, and of its stability and security? Those are critical questions, but I recognise that they are for another day and I hope that it comes soon.

The hon. Member for Moray introduced his motion with moving reference to his own story about the arrival of his mother in this country, which helps to explain his commitment to helping other refugees. There is much to agree with in his motion. It recognises the Government’s huge contribution to the camps for refugees from Syria and the commitment to take on 20,000 vulnerable Syrian refugees from those camps. It calls for a “full and proper role” for the UK in providing sanctuary.

However, the motion is very short of detail in some ways and divisive in one critical way. It calls for

“a greater international effort through the United Nations to secure the position of such displaced people”,

but what does that mean? The hon. Gentleman did not shed any light on what he expects the United Nations to do. Does it encompass the proposal from my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) for safe havens inside Syria? Is the hon. Gentleman thinking of no-fly zones? He said nothing about what he wants from the United Nations. I offer the thought that perhaps the most successful intervention by the United Nations in a state that had been through civil war was in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which was run by the United Nations for a period of years before being successfully returned under democratic elections. We need to look at that more closely in the longer term.

The line that reveals the divisiveness of the motion is that which calls for the Government to report on

“how that number can be increased”.

That comes only two days after the Prime Minister’s announcement that our country would take 20,000 refugees. The hon. Member for Moray denied that this was a bidding war, but that is exactly what it looks and feels like. A cry goes up, “Something must be done.” A Labour leadership candidate agrees and says, “Yes, we should take 10,000.” The Prime Minister agrees and announces the framework and terms for taking 20,000 refugees, but the SNP, on its Opposition day, asks how that number can be increased, without mentioning a figure—neither the hon. Member for Moray, nor anybody else speaking for his party today has done so. We can be sure that if the Government did come back to raise the figure, whatever it was raised to would not be enough, and the SNP and others would ask how we could increase it further.

[Hywel Williams]

If it is a bidding war, how did the Government reach a figure of 20,000, rather than 20,001 or 19,999? I did ask the Secretary of State that precise question earlier—I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman was in his place then—and she was unable to give me a proper answer.

[Richard Graham]

I am not sure whether there was a question in there, Madam Deputy Speaker, although there may be one for the Government to offer on. The important thing I was going to say is that we should not get obsessed with a particular figure. We have heard moving speeches this afternoon from Members echoing what I believe to be the core point of the motion, which we all share: the requirement on the nation and on all of us to respond with compassion to an international disaster.

Several Members, most movingly my hon. Friend the Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Nicola Blackwood), in an echo of what the hon. Member for Moray said, have told us that they are from immigrant families. I was working on aid projects in Africa almost 30 years ago, helping displaced people from neighbouring countries around there, and I was in Hong Kong when its Government, on behalf of the British Government, were trying to deal with the Vietnamese boat people. It is incredibly easy for people to be critical of situations involving refugees if they are not dealing with it themselves and do not have the responsibility at the time. We should recognise that, as many Members have said. This nation does have a strong record, and we should be pulling together and doing our best to help people in the ways that we can.

On that note, I thought the most discordant speech heard in this Chamber for a long while—it was almost a disgraceful speech—was that by the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron). He seems to have entirely forgotten that his party, when in coalition government with my party, was responsible for bringing together this considerable increase in our commitment to international development, which has led to our being able to provide huge sums in funding and help hundreds of thousands of people, if not more than 1 million, in the refugee camps just outside Syria. It was extraordinary that all he could bring himself to say was that this Government “react with dogs” and barbed wire, in a reference to Calais. He made no reference to what is being achieved for the refugees from Syria. Unfortunately, a number of Members have descended into making party political points, especially the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter), who sounded the most extraordinary, tribal note, referring to a “rush to arms”, which is not even the subject of this debate. Instead of doing that, we should be focusing today on what we all share and what we can achieve together.

On that note, I wish to make a practical suggestion that I believe would make a real difference to this nation’s handling of the refugee crisis. I touched on it earlier in an intervention on my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State. The most practical thing we can do is encourage the leading charities and non-governmental organisations, perhaps in that meeting on Friday with the Government, to come together to create a new Syrian refugee fund, perhaps administered by Save the Children in particular, although others should be involved. Such a fund would allow so many of our generous constituents around the whole country to contribute, and it should be matched pound for pound by the Government. That would enable a significant fund to be available to help the refugees when they come to this country. It could be disbursed through local government authorities or it could be done directly, but all these are issues that should be resolved. We have done this before. We did it successfully in response to the typhoon in the Philippines about 18 months ago, when many people in our constituencies contributed. St Peter’s school in my constituency raised funds and gave a lot of time towards doing so. Such an approach helps the people of Britain to realise that the Government share their sympathy and compassion, and will match what they give pound for pound. That is a practical suggestion that would help us.

Some hon. Members have intimated that we should do almost everything that Germany is doing. It seems to me extraordinary that we should feel obliged to get into some form of bidding war with Germany, of all nations. We should surely recognise that Germany is dealing not only with today’s humanitarian crisis—[Interruption.] The SNP would do well to listen—but with her own modern history. We should respect and admire that but not see German commitments as a competitive challenge.

We should recognise that each country can contribute differently. For example, the role of the Royal Navy in the Mediterranean in saving more than 6,000 people who might otherwise have drowned is not something that many countries in the European Union could emulate, and certainly not Germany. We should recognise that we can all make our own separate and different contribution to the crisis. We should pull together; make sure that we get on with implementing what has already been announced by the Prime Minister, and not try to split hairs about numbers of refugees; encourage the charities to create the fund in which the Government will match what individuals donate; locally capture significant offers of help through the asylum and refugee offices in our own counties; and make it happen.

Police Widows Pensions

Debate between Hywel Williams and Richard Graham

Wednesday 25th February 2015 Westminster Hall

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

On a point of order, Mr Williams. Would it be in order to allow the police widows and widowers who are attending today to come into the room before we start?

[Hywel Williams (in the Chair)]

Yes, they can come and sit in the Public Gallery.

Okay, Mr Graham, I think you should now begin.

[Richard Graham]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Williams, and a real pleasure to be able to speak on an issue that is important to Members from all parts of the House. The happiness of the many individuals involved and the reputation of the Government and the House for ensuring that, as far as possible, justice is done for those who for no reasons of their own find themselves in a difficult situation hinge to some extent on the decisions made on this matter by Ministers and, in due course, the Government.

I will sketch the background to how I came to bring this debate to the House, run through some of the examples I hope the Minister will consider, and summarise by making the argument that the Government should reconsider how police widows’ and widowers’ pre-1987 pensions are treated. Just before Christmas last year, I received an e-mail from the Police Federation outlining a situation of which I had until then been unaware. It pointed out that the Police Pensions Regulations 1987 did not allow a number of police widows and widowers to marry or cohabit without losing their right to a police widow’s or widower’s pension for life. The e-mail highlighted the case being made by PC Colin Hall’s widow, Cathryn Hall, who was widowed at the age of 24 in 1987 and left to bring up her four-year-old daughter alone.

Cathryn, who is with us today—as are some 15 other widows and widowers—was faced with a difficult decision: to keep her police widow’s pension or to move in with her partner, which would mean that she was no longer eligible to receive the pension. She set up a petition, which has more than 71,000 signatures. The campaign, which I was unaware of until Christmas last year, is one I would like the police Minister to consider. In the petition, Cathryn describes how her husband Colin died and life after his death, and she makes the case as to why she and other widows should be treated in the same way as those whose pensions are covered by the change in the 1987 regulations. She makes the point that the Minister is in a difficult position in balancing the sacrifices of police officers and their widows or widowers against those of members of the armed forces, for whom significant changes were made on Remembrance Sunday last year.

Since I have been in contact with Cathryn Hall, she has kindly introduced me to a number of other widows and widowers, including two from my county of Gloucestershire: Sharon Jones and Julie Shadwick, both of whom have sad stories to tell. Many others have been in contact with their MPs, but there is not time, alas, to read out all their stories. I will mention Sharon’s story. She was married to Ian Jones, a chief inspector in the Gloucestershire police force, who was killed in an accident in June 2005. She survived on the pension that the service provided and brought up three children on her own. She recently met another man and married him at the end of October 2014, which, as she writes,

“brings me a wonderful opportunity to start a new life. However, as a result of this, I have lost my pension entitlement which I object to most strongly. I am being penalised for finding new love after 10 years alone.”