Oral Answers to Questions

Jim Murphy Excerpts

Wednesday 18th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

The hon. Lady is quite right, and nearly 250,000 Syrian refugees have crossed the border into Iraq, to which we were already providing some support. She may be aware that I have announced an initial £3 million of humanitarian support. In addition, I am proud that a DFID team was one of the first on the ground, having been sent out last Thursday to assess need and work directly with UN agencies setting up the camps that are now required.

[Mr Jim Murphy (East Renfrewshire) (Lab)]

The Syrian conflict is in its fourth year, and we have seen the re-emergence of polio, the use of chemical weapons and the slaughter of innocents, with entire cities under siege. With the world’s focus rightly on neighbouring Iraq, this is a conflict that still demands our attention. What assessment has the Secretary of State made of proposals from the normally recalcitrant Russians to open four border crossings to help the vast numbers of people in need of humanitarian aid?

[Justine Greening]

We have to ensure that the Syrian crisis does not become a forgotten crisis and that the refugees and those affected in Syria are not forgotten in the midst of the crisis now emerging in Iraq. In response to the right hon. Member for Cynon Valley (Ann Clwyd), I alluded to independent monitors checking aid in cross-border areas, which is one of the issues on which we are looking to work with the Russians. One of the issues raised by the Syrian Government is that they do not always believe that cross-border aid is inappropriate—in fact, they do not agree with it. We have to push for cross-border aid, because there is no other way of getting to the people in need inside Syria.

[Mr Murphy]

Some people who fled the Syrian conflict into Iraq are, heartbreakingly, now fleeing the Iraq crisis back into Syria. Some 200,000 Syrians have fled into Kurdish Iraq and now 300,000 internally displaced persons have fled the ISIS advance into Iraqi Kurdistan, so what assessment has the Secretary of State and her Department made of the additional humanitarian support now required by the Kurdish authorities to deal with this double crisis that they now face?

[Justine Greening]

Around 95% of the Syrian refugees who had fled into Iraq are themselves Kurdish in origin. In total over recent weeks, around 1 million people have been displaced within Iraq itself. As I set out earlier, a three-person team went out last Thursday: two of them are working directly with the Government of Kurdistan to discover what we can do to help that regional Government to respond; the other is working with the UN to help set up the camps. As with the refugees from the crisis in Syria, most displaced people are staying in host communities rather than in camps, which are very limited in the facilities they can provide.