ISIL: Iraq and Syria

Keith Vaz Excerpts

Thursday 16th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

I am probably long enough in the tooth to know that questions asking for categorical assurances of further additional budget resources are ones for my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer. However, it is the case, as my hon. Friend says, that the intelligence and security services are making a huge contribution to the fight against ISIL. Much of the fight has to take place in the intelligence and security space. It is about stopping foreign fighters getting out there, tracking them while they are out there, intercepting them if they try to come back, cutting off funding flows and stopping the supply of illicit equipment and materials. The services have reprioritised—something they do incredibly effectively when they need to—to make this their main effort and they are providing a huge input to the fight.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

Further to the contribution from the hon. Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone), 30 British jihadists have died since the current fighting started, and all the evidence is that the more who die, the more who want to go and fight. Although I obviously accept the package of measures that the Foreign Secretary has set out to the House today, what more can be done to stop people going in the first place—not just to stop them crossing borders, but to stop them boarding those flights?

[Mr Hammond]

It is probably worth noting that, as well as the reported 30 dead, there have been media reports of an even larger number of jihadis who, having seen the brutality of ISIL, want to escape from it and return, but are reportedly unable to do so. The kernel of the right hon. Gentleman’s question is about how we stop people getting out there. We have to take a multi-tiered, multi-layered approach. We start by trying to explain to them the reality of what ISIL is about, undermining its narrative and ideology, and explaining to them that it is incompatible with any reasonable and sensible interpretation of Islam. If we do not succeed in dissuading people, we will try to intercept them, and we have an increasing number of tools available to us. If we fail to intercept them leaving the UK, we have the opportunity, through our collaboration with Turkey, to intercept them when they seek to cross the Turkish border. At all those stages, we will do everything we can to prevent foreign fighters from reaching Iraq and Syria.