Syria: Refugees and Counter-terrorism

Jack Dromey Excerpts

Monday 7th September 2015 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. It is a difficult balance to explain the information we have without endangering national security or operations that may be under way. All I would say is that we will always try to provide the best and most up-to-date intelligence information in a format that people can find reliable, but, as Prime Ministers have found before, this is very, very difficult water to go through.

[Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)]

Our country has a long and honourable tradition of providing asylum and we warmly welcome those who will come to our shores—to Birmingham as they did to Berlin. Leadership is key at this time of the greatest refugee crisis since the war, and so, too, is the tone that that leadership sets. Will the Prime Minister therefore assure the House that there will be no more talk of swarms of marauding migrants, when there are hundreds of thousands of people fleeing for their lives?

[The Prime Minister]

I think what matters is the action we take to demonstrate the humanity and moral conscience of Britain. That is what we are doing today.