Tunisia, and European Council

Keith Vaz Excerpts

Monday 29th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

First, may I join my hon. Friend in paying tribute to Carly Lovett? We have all heard the heartbreaking story about that young woman gunned down in the prime of life. He is right to say that the threat is everywhere. The difference between this type of threat and the al-Qaeda threat that we faced for many years, and which we still face, is that in the latter case we were often dealing with centrally co-ordinated plots, so if we could get on to them we could try to work out how to mitigate them. Here we are dealing with a lot of self-radicalised so-called Jihadis who have been radicalised through the internet, often by people in Syria or Iraq. Hopefully in many cases we will get advance warning and be able to stop them, but in some cases we will not. That can happen in Britain, as it can around the world. That underlines the social responsibility of social media companies, as I said earlier, but also the need for us to have the most modern capabilities to deal with the treat. As for migration, we are signatories to the Dublin convention and we want to ensure that it continues to work.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

Two and a half years ago, in his first speech of the UK’s presidency of the G8, the Prime Minister warned about the terrorist threat in the Maghreb because of the disintegration of Libya. I welcome the Home Secretary’s presence in Sousse to reassure not only the British citizens there, but the Tunisian Government and people, but the Prime Minister is having bilateral discussions with Heads of Government. What is the international way, and what platform can we use, to defeat those who wish to act in this horrific way?

[The Prime Minister]

The right hon. Gentleman asks a very direct question. There are several platforms that can work. The G7 wants to have a clearing house for assisting countries like Libya, Tunisia, Morocco and Egypt to make sure that, when not all the countries are offering the same sort of help and assistance, we have more of a working out of who should be working with which country. I hope that that can be put into place and work soon, because it makes sense for Britain, for instance, to partner a country like Nigeria and possibly Libya. Other countries, with their historical links, may be better placed to partner other countries. That is one network. The other is using the EU’s neighbourhood programme to make sure that we give better assistance and support, and building up the civil societies and economies of the countries in north Africa.