Informal European Council

Julian Brazier Excerpts

Monday 6th February 2017 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The work we are doing with the Libyan coastguard is of course about training its people to be able to do the job that we all expect them to do and that many of them want to be able to do. Separately from that, we will be working to enhance our ability to work across borders and through international agreements, using things such as joint investigation teams, to ensure that we are catching these criminal gangs. We have put some extra effort into this. I think we have to put even more effort into it in the future.

[Sir Julian Brazier (Canterbury) (Con)]

I welcome this statement and, in particular, my right hon. Friend’s comments about refugees. Does she agree that the work we are doing, both through our development budget and through our armed forces, to underpin the fragile states of Lebanon and Jordan is absolutely pivotal and is vastly more than is being done by the rest of Europe?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend makes a very important point about the support we have given. We took a very simple view that we can support more people who have fled from Syria by giving them humanitarian aid and support in the region than we can by bringing them to the UK. We will be bringing, and are bringing, vulnerable people—in particular, vulnerable Syrian refugees—here to the UK, but we continue to believe, as the second biggest bilateral donor to the region, that this is important as well. I continue to commend the work of Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan in the support that they are giving to the significant number of refugees they are supporting.