Oral Answers to Questions

Keith Vaz Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

My hon. Friend will know that this is an international problem that requires an international co-ordinated solution, not least from the EU, and the UK is part of that. Getting a stable Government in Libya is a crucial part of how we can start to clamp down on the traffickers who trade in human misery, and I assure him that both DFID and the Foreign Office are a part of that work.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

rose—

[Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)]

rose—

[Mr Speaker]

Ah. The Vaz sibling rivalry lives on. I call Mr Keith Vaz.

[Keith Vaz]

Thank you, Mr Speaker. [Hon. Members: “Wrong choice!”] You made the right choice.

The hon. Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Daniel Kawczynski) is right, in that 92% of the 170,000 who have travelled from north Africa to Italy came through Libya. The Khartoum process is clearly not working, and the humanitarian crisis starts in north Africa, goes to Italy and will end in Calais. What further steps can we take to help the people of north Africa?

[Justine Greening]

There are several steps, one being immediately to make sure that the Khartoum process does deliver. It is crucial because it brings together destination countries, transit countries and countries of origin to work more collaboratively. The other key thing is to work upstream, as the situation shows that we cannot simply assume that countries that are not developing and do not have prospects for their young people will deal with the problem. People see the better lives being led in countries such as ours and want to have the same thing for themselves. In the long term, the only real solution is development.