UNHCR Syrian Refugees Programme

Justine Greening Excerpts

Wednesday 29th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Secretary of State for International Development (Justine Greening)]

The House has heard many eloquent contributions, and many horror stories of the crisis inside Syria and the impact it has on the broader region. The hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) set that out. There are men and women inside Syria who are denied access to any form of humanitarian support, including access to food—the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Sir Gerald Kaufman) spoke of those who are dying from starvation through a lack of humanitarian support. In a moving speech, the hon. Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern) spoke of the outbreak of polio 14 years after Syria was certified polio-free. She will be pleased to learn that the UK was part of helping the World Health Organisation to immunise about 200,000 children in Syria at the end of last year in response to that outbreak.

Since the crisis began, 14 UN staff and 32 Syrian Arab Red Crescent volunteers have been killed doing their jobs, going about providing humanitarian support to those who need it. As hon. Members have said, the crisis is having an exceptionally heavy toll on Syrian children. I have made several visits to the region. I have met refugees who had been in the camps for some time and those who had just arrived. Some started off with a lot and some with not very much, but in most cases they have very little, if anything, left to their names. Most have left having seen their towns and villages bombed and in fear of their lives. Many have moved on several occasions before finally taking the decision to leave Syria.

In Lebanon, 40% of the refugees arriving are children aged 17 or under, which is a shocking statistic. I met children who are being educated in the Zaatari camp in Jordan. When a convoy plane flies overhead delivering humanitarian supplies to the camp, the children automatically dive under the tables because they are so used to having to do that in Syria when bombs are dropping.

I assure the House that the UK is standing by the Syrian people in their hour of desperate need. As we have heard, our total funding for Syria and the region is now £600 million, which is three times the size of our response to any other humanitarian crisis. We have also heard that our aid contribution is second only to that of the United States. In fact, it is getting on for as much as all other EU member states put together. That figure represents the deep concern, which I think has been demonstrated across the whole House today, regarding the worsening plight of the Syrian people and the growing need inside Syria in particular and across the region.

[Bob Stewart]

May I ask the Secretary of State to assure the House that, to the best of her knowledge, refugees who get to the Syrian border and into a camp will be fed and clothed, and have their basic medical needs taken care of? We cannot do anything inside Syria, but we sure as hell can do something on the borders.

[Justine Greening]

I can reassure my hon. Friend. UK aid is being supplied to more than 300,000 people a month, many of whom are in camps. We are supplying water to nearly 1 million people a month, which is vital. We have provided more than 300,000 medical consultations for people who would otherwise be without the sort of medical support they were often used to in their previous lives. Syria was a middle-income country and people had lifestyles that we would recognise. For them, the transition into camps has been harsh.

[Anas Sarwar]

The right hon. Lady speaks about support to camps. Given that half the refugees are in urban areas, will she outline what support is going to those parts?

[Justine Greening]

I was going to refer to the hon. Gentleman’s earlier remarks. He is right to highlight the pressures that the influx of refugees is having not just on countries as a whole, but on so-called host communities. Many have seen their populations literally double, and that is having the sort of effect we can all imagine. It is stretching health care, hospitals, schools—I will come on to talk about some of the work we are doing to support children—water, sanitation and sewerage systems. The UK was instrumental in working with the World Bank to set up a trust fund, focused in that case on helping Jordan, to invest in basic services. We want to ensure that not only are refugees taken care of, but the people in host communities who have been very generous in accepting refugees and have been hugely affected by doing so. Another example, which is part of our work to support children in Lebanon, is that we have recently provided more than 300,000 packs of textbooks for children in public schools. Most of the children receiving those textbooks will be Lebanese and about 80,000 will be Syrian. It is important that we reflect and recognise the support needed by host communities.

Millions of Syrians are facing the harshest winter of their lives. For many, it is the third winter they are facing as refugees. I was in Bekaa valley in Lebanon earlier this month. The UK has provided about £90 million for so-called “winterisation”: winter tents, warm clothing, heating, food, blankets and shelter kits. I pay tribute, as the right hon. Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Mr Clarke) did, to the non-governmental organisations. They are often the organisations that provide this support on the ground. The whole House should pay tribute to their dedication and efforts in what are incredibly challenging and often dangerous situations.

We are deeply concerned about sexual violence. The UK is funding specialist programmes that prioritise the protection of women and girls who have been affected by the crisis, both inside Syria and in the region. We held an international summit, which was a call to action on the overall issue of protecting girls and women in humanitarian crisis situations so that they are not victims of sexual violence. The hon. Member for Wirral South was right to highlight some of the health issues faced by women, in particular, in these circumstances.

Inevitably, it is the most vulnerable groups who find themselves most at risk. Last September, when I was in Zaatari camp, I met a number of women who were living there. It was interesting to hear the views of my hon. Friend the Member for Brent Central (Sarah Teather), who has also been to that camp. Many of the women are stoic about the situation in which they find themselves, but once they begin to talk one hears more about the traumatic experiences they have been through. The thing they worry about most, whether they are men or women, is the impact of the crisis—[Interruption.]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

Order. There are Members now in the Chamber who have not sat through this sombre debate, but who are making so much noise that I cannot hear the Secretary of State. Everyone else has been heard. Members ought to show courtesy to other Members.

[Justine Greening]

The thing that parents worry about most is what the crisis is doing to their children and the experiences their children are going through. I have met children who have clearly been traumatised by these events. Many, on the outside, seem to be coping with the crisis, but when talking to them, one realises that their heartbreaking experiences will mark them for the rest of their lives. When they draw pictures in school, they draw pictures of planes bombing their homes, and when they talk, they talk about chemical weapons attacks and their concerns about what they have done to Syria.

As highlighted today, the big challenge is that Syria’s children are in danger of becoming a lost generation. They will grow up and become adults, and we all have a choice about what kind of adults we would like them to become and the kind of opportunities we would like them to have. That is one reason why the UK has worked hard with UNICEF—we are now its biggest bilateral donor—to focus international attention on the No Lost Generation campaign, which is about ensuring that children, in particular, are taken care of.

The thing about UN appeals that are only half funded is that while many life-saving measures, such as those mentioned today, are taken, those extra things that children in particular often need, such as education and psycho-social trauma counselling, tend to get left out. That is why it is important that these UN appeals be funded, and why the UK has provided so much funding and why the rest of the international community needs to work harder to ensure the appeal is fully funded.

It was particularly interesting to hear from my hon. Friends the Members for South Basildon and East Thurrock (Stephen Metcalfe) and for Pudsey (Stuart Andrew), who have seen refugees in Turkey for themselves and who eloquently set out their views on how it was affecting children. I can assure the House that the £30 million that we have invested in UNICEF to provide protection, trauma care and education, particularly for children, will not be the final word in our investment to help those children.

Some 4.2 million children are in need inside Syria, and 2 million of them are school-aged but not in school. We know that many schools in Syria have been bombed. About 500,000 child-registered refugees are not enrolled in school, and as we have heard, some are sent out to work, but some have parents too scared to take them out of the tent and into school, because they do not want to let them out of their sight in camps as big as Zaatari. One of the most important things to do, working with the NGO community and UNICEF, is to ensure that parents feel secure in sending their children to school, often in alien environments.

I have met teachers in Lebanon in schools running two shifts, and they are amazing professionals. They sat down with me and talked about how they and head teachers had work as teams to ensure schools could operate double shifts—in the morning for Lebanese children, and in the afternoon for Syrian children. It is remarkable to see how these children rub along together and have come to understand more about each other’s experiences as the term has gone by.

Clearly, the international community needs to do more. Countries such as Lebanon and Jordan in particular, but also many others, have been incredibly generous in opening up their borders and allowing refugees in, and it is absolutely right that today my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary announced that the UK Government would continue to evolve our support for those affected by the Syrian crisis by extending that support and providing sanctuary to the most at-risk refugees from this war. The right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) talked about Ugandan-Asian refugees coming here. One of them is now the leader of Wandsworth council, which shows the contribution that many refugees make to Britain.

I can assure the right hon. and learned Member for North East Fife (Sir Menzies Campbell), the right hon. Member for East Renfrewshire (Mr Murphy) and the hon. Members for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood) and for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) that we will work hand in hand with the UNHCR. I had a good talk with Antonia Guterres in Switzerland last week about how we could ensure the programme worked effectively.

I think that, ultimately, we all recognise that Syria needs a political solution to end the fighting. That point was made very eloquently by someone for whom I have a huge amount of respect, my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt), and also by my right hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South (Sir Richard Ottaway) and the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Mr Llwyd).

In the meantime, as we all have hopes for the Geneva II process but retain a heavy sense of the level of the challenges that remain, the British people can be proud of the role that Britain is playing in conveying humanitarian assistance to those who need it. As we have already heard today, not only is that the right thing to do, but ending the conflict and bringing stability to the region is in Britain’s national interest.

Britain is on the side of the people in Syria about whom we have talked today. We will do everything that we can to achieve a political solution, but during that process we will continue to be at the forefront of the humanitarian response.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House welcomes the Government’s £600 million response to the unprecedented Syrian refugee crisis; further welcomes the UK’s leadership in the appeal for aid and supports calls for the rest of the international community to ensure the UN humanitarian appeal for Syria has the resources it needs to help those suffering from the conflict; is concerned about the plight of the most vulnerable refugees who will find it hardest to cope in the camps in the region, including victims of torture and children in need of special assistance; and calls on the Government to participate in the UNHCR Resettlement and Humanitarian Admission of Syrian Refugees Programme.

[Steve Rotheram (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Earlier today, during Prime Minister’s Question Time, I said that child poverty was on the increase in Britain. That was disputed by the Prime Minister, who claimed that it was, in fact, going down.

As you know, Madam Deputy Speaker, I am a diligent fellow, and I was once called “a perspicacious terrier” by Mr Speaker himself, so I double-checked with Save the Children this afternoon. I can now confirm that absolute child poverty is rising in this country, and that, just this month, the Institute for Fiscal Studies released projections showing that, whichever way the Government measure child poverty, it is set to increase massively over the next decade. Madam Deputy Speaker, could you—