Oral Answers to Questions

Jonathan Ashworth Excerpts

Wednesday 8th July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

The main thing we are doing is to work hand-in-hand with the Lebanese Government, who have taken great steps over recent months to make sure that their schools can cope not only with their own children, but with a doubling in the number of Syrian refugee children who now need to use them. That means not just support for teachers, but support in schools, in their buildings and in textbooks as well.

[Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State will be aware that the Lebanese Minister for Education said that Lebanon is facing a $100 million shortfall in the budget for educating Syrian refugee children. What representations has she made to her international counterparts to ensure Lebanon gets that $100 million?

[Justine Greening]

The hon. Gentleman is quite right to raise that issue. As I have just said, the UK has already increased our investment. In fact, at the UN General Assembly last year, I held a pledge meeting to get international partners to fund more of the educational needs in both Lebanon and Jordan specifically. That raised $344 million at the time, but, as he set out, this is an ongoing requirement and the international community must step up to fund it.

UK’s Development Work (Girls and Women)

Jonathan Ashworth Excerpts

Thursday 7th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

I have been clear that I believe we need a stand-alone goal, and that we need to see these issues right the way through any new development framework. As my hon. Friend knows, the debate on what the new development framework should be once the millennium development goals come to an end in 2015 is at an early stage, but I can reassure her that, having been to the first two meetings in London and with the Prime Minister in Liberia, there is an understanding that it is vital for the issue of gender, which was in one of the MDGs in the first development framework, to be in the next framework.

[Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab)]

I would like to press the Secretary of State a little further on the issue of Syrian refugees, which she touched on in her statement. The number of refugees has now hit the 1 million mark, and two-thirds of them are women and children. The UN has said that it lacks the funds necessary to deal with the crisis. Yesterday, the Foreign Secretary said that the UK

“will seek new ways to relieve the humanitarian crisis”.—[Official Report, 6 March 2013; Vol. 559, c. 962.]

Will she elaborate a little further on what that will involve? Does she anticipate the UK increasing its financial contribution to the aid effort?

[Justine Greening]

The UK has played a leading role not only in providing financial and humanitarian assistance to help alleviate the suffering of the 1 million refugees and, in addition, the many displaced people within Syria, but in beating the drum for other countries to step up to the plate. The Kuwait conference I attended a few weeks ago saw Arab nations, in particular, begin to put in significant funding. The hon. Gentleman asks what more we can do. I am prepared to do more. Unfortunately, if we continue to see refugees streaming across the Syrian border into neighbouring countries, it is likely that we will need to do more. As I said in my statement, I raised formally at the UN the issue of how we deal with women and girls. That needs to be carefully thought through and never missed in our humanitarian work. From looking at similar situations, such as in Haiti, we know that it is easy for the plight of women and girls to be missed. They are never more vulnerable than in such situations. The hon. Gentleman is right to raise the issue, and I assure him that we are raising it in the UN to ensure that the risks are mitigated wherever possible.

Humanitarian Emergency Response Review

Jonathan Ashworth Excerpts

Wednesday 15th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Mitchell]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to make that point. It is the quality of local leadership on the ground that determines how quickly we can respond. Inevitably, although the UN actors on the ground are extremely good at what they do in normal times, they are sometimes not the right people to respond to disasters. That is why it is essential to get people there who can provide the necessary quality of leadership. For example, it was very interesting that the presence of John Ging, the No. 2 to Valerie Amos, in Libya very shortly after the conflict started led to an immediate response of a much better quality than we had previously seen.

[Jon Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab)]

Many communities in my constituency—particularly those from Pakistan and Bangladesh, although I could name many others—have a commendable record of contributing to relief when humanitarian disaster strikes. Given that, will the Secretary of State give us some more details of how he expects to involve diaspora communities in emergency relief work and ensure that their expertise is taken advantage of?

[Mr Mitchell]

It depends on the disaster, but the hon. Gentleman is entirely correct to point to the valuable work that diaspora communities do. In the case of the Pakistan floods last year, the Pakistani diaspora, not least in the midlands, made a tremendous contribution not only financially but through a number of different charities to which it gave strong support, not least Islamic Relief. That meant that it played a vital part in the overall British relief effort that was mobilised.