Hurricane Irma

James Duddridge Excerpts

Thursday 7th September 2017 Commons Chamber

[Sir Alan Duncan]

I quite understand what the hon. Gentleman is saying in respect of Anguilla, because there have been some comments in the media comparing our response with that of the French, but I very much hope I can give him and the House genuine reassurance. We are very well practised in emergency response. We place a Royal Fleet Auxiliary vessel in the area almost every year—I think it is every year—in anticipation of hurricane risk. In this case, the hurricane has been extraordinarily severe, but the advantage of having the Royal Fleet Auxiliary vessel is that we do not trap response resources in a country or on an island when they might be more importantly needed on a neighbouring island.

The Royal Fleet Auxiliary vessel has flexibility. It has the ability to make and deliver water. It has bulldozers and a helicopter. Crucially, we may have resources on an island and the roads get blocked, but if we have a Royal Fleet Auxiliary vessel with a chopper, we can get to the people in need very quickly. The Royal Fleet Auxiliary vessel is a fantastic resource of which we should be very proud. It has marines, military engineers, resources, food and supplies, and it can deploy flexibly according to the urgency and need caused by the devastating path of a hurricane, because we never know where the need is greatest until the hurricane has happened. I say again that we can supplement the initial urgent response with other relief flights provided by DFID out of the disaster relief funding we have. Over time, the House will see that our response proved effective and good for the people we are there to look after.

[James Duddridge (Rochford and Southend East) (Con)]

My thoughts go out to people such as Victor Banks, Orlando Smith and Don Romeo, whom I worked closely with and have been trying to contact. Does this immediate crisis not highlight a conundrum? While the overseas territories have preferential treatment and first call on the DFID budget, the nature of middle-income status does not recognise the real environmental risks that small island states have. How can the Minister leverage his time at DFID and the Foreign Office to ensure that that little conundrum can perhaps be solved under his time and service?

[Sir Alan Duncan]

May I first acknowledge my hon. Friend’s service as a Foreign Office Minister? He has great knowledge of this field. He is really asking me to dissect and explain, or even give an intellectual thesis on, what one might call the “ODA conundrum”, in which some cases qualify for overseas development assistance funding but not others. When it comes to hurricanes and typhoons, the argument may well be, “We wish you had spent money in advance,” and so on. I am sure that greater thought will be given to the issue, but DFID will do its utmost with the resources it has to address need wherever it is able to do so.