Oral Answers to Questions
Keith Vaz Excerpts(7 years, 4 months ago)
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Priti Patel
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. There is no doubt that small charities are a crucial part of the UK’s development offer internationally. There are many extraordinary grassroots charities, and I urge all colleagues on both sides of the House to encourage their small charities to apply for this fund. There is a great opportunity to build links, both nationally and internationally, on these important issues.
Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)
Will the Secretary of State give priority in allocating funds to areas of the world such as Yemen? There is a humanitarian catastrophe in Yemen, where 300,000 people are facing a cholera epidemic.
Priti Patel
The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right, and I commend him for again raising the issue of Yemen, where the conflict is having a devastating impact and, of course, there is a cholera crisis. The Government are spending hundreds of millions on providing necessary life-saving support to the people who are engulfed by that awful conflict.
Commonwealth Development Corporation Bill
Keith Vaz ExcerptsTuesday 29th November 2016
(7 years, 12 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for International Development (Priti Patel)
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
The Bill will raise the limit on the total cumulative level of financial support that can be provided to the CDC, the UK’s development finance institution. The CDC was founded by Clement Attlee’s Labour Government in 1948 and is the world’s oldest development finance institution. It is wholly owned by the UK Government and does not have private shareholders. Its mission is to tackle poverty by creating jobs and driving inclusive economic development for people in the poorest countries in Africa and South Asia.
The CDC exists to help to address what economists call a “market failure”: the desperate shortage of investment in the world’s poorest countries because, in part, of a misperception of the risks of doing business there. It addresses that market failure by providing investment capital to support the building of businesses throughout Africa and South Asia. Its explicit mandate is to drive labour-intensive growth by creating jobs and opportunities for working people. Since its creation, the CDC has been supported by all successive Governments—Labour, coalition and Conservative—because of its core purpose of tackling poverty through sustainable economic growth. I present the Bill in the hope that that spirit of cross-party support will continue. I look forward to colleagues across the House offering the fullest possible scrutiny, and I welcome the opportunity to constructively address any points that Members raise.
In recent years the UK has led the world in efforts to eliminate extreme poverty. The previous Labour Government made an important contribution, for example, in relieving the unpayable debts of the world’s poorest countries. Under David Cameron’s leadership, the UK become the first G7 country to meet its promise to spend 0.7% of our gross national income on international development. The current Prime Minister has made it clear that the Government will honour that commitment and intensify our leadership on key global issues such as tackling modern slavery.
The Government have also rightly made clear and bold manifesto commitments to tackle poverty directly.
Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)
I warmly congratulate the Secretary of State on her appointment to the Cabinet in this very important job—I know that she has been doing it for a while, but this is my first opportunity to do so. Later, she will meet the officers of the all-party group on Yemen. Will she confirm that the refocusing of funds in support of the CDC will not affect the Government’s commitment to the provision of emergency and humanitarian aid that she and her Minister of State have spoken of and given to Yemen over the past few years, as did her predecessor, the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell), who is also in the Chamber?
Priti Patel
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that welcome and for his remarks. He is right: successive British Governments have been very clear not just about their commitment to the CDC but about our collective focus on humanitarian need at times of crisis. I look forward to seeing the delegation from the all-party group later today, when I will of course speak more about the work that the Government are doing in Yemen, where we are seeing the most awful and horrendous catastrophe. I will speak to the right hon. Gentleman later in more detail about the type of interventions and the support we are providing to those trapped in that dreadful conflict.
By 2020, we will save 1.4 million children’s lives by immunising 76 million children against killer diseases. We will help at least 11 million children in the poorest countries to gain a decent education, improve nutrition for at least 50 million people who would otherwise go hungry, and help at least 60 million people get access to clean water and sanitation. We will lead the response to humanitarian emergencies. We will lead a major new global programme to accelerate the development of vaccines and drugs to eliminate the world’s deadliest infectious diseases, while investing to save lives from malaria and working to end preventable child and maternal deaths. We will also continue the inspirational leadership of my predecessor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Putney (Justine Greening), on women and girls.
Those commitments stand, along with our commitment to human development and directly meeting the needs of the world’s poorest, which is absolute and unwavering. Indeed, the first major decision I took in my role as Secretary of State for International Development was to increase the UK’s contribution to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria from £800 million to £1.1 billion. That will help to save millions of lives in the years ahead.
Priti Patel
I thank my hon. Friend for his comments. As he knows, a great deal of work is taking place with other Governments, helping them to develop their own capacity for aid, so that they can work more effectively bilaterally and with multilateral agencies. At a time when we see a great deal of conflict in that region, we are working on an agreement with some countries in the Gulf and the middle east on what their own development bodies and agencies can do to support humanitarian relief as a result of crises taking place on their doorstep.
Today I want to explain why CDC is a vital partner in our efforts to end poverty, for it is widely recognised that aid on its own will not eliminate poverty. No country can defeat poverty and leave aid dependency behind without the prospect of a functioning economy, sustainable economic growth, jobs, trade and investment. Development investments via CDC complement our other work and allow us to fight the scourge of poverty on all fronts. In the world today, faltering economic growth and rising young populations have exposed the chronic need for jobs and better opportunities. At present, most developing countries are not growing fast enough or industrialising fast enough to leave poverty behind.
The additional financing needed to achieve the UN sustainable development goals by 2030 is estimated at $2.5 trillion every year, but current investment levels are less than half that. As the UN and many international development banks have made clear, much of this finance will need to come from the private sector. The chair of the OECD’s development assistance committee, Erik Solheim, has stated:
“There is no longer a dispute about the need for private sector involvement in development. The role of DFIs”—
that is, development finance institutions—
“is to connect development aid with private investment, and explore how we can employ market forces in the world’s most challenging places.”
Dr Dirk Willem te Velde, head of the international economic development group at the Overseas Development Institute, writing in the Financial Times yesterday, said:
“Statistical evidence to be published by the Overseas Development Institute soon suggests that a £10bn increase in exposure of DFIs in Africa would raise average incomes and labour productivity by a quarter of a per cent, which is actually slightly above the average impact of aid overall. Most jobs are created by the private sector, and working with the private sector to create jobs is vital for inclusive growth.”
We know that that will be difficult in the poorest, most fragile and conflict-affected states. These are the hardest markets, where businesses will not go on their own because it is perceived as too risky, yet it is in those very places that jobs and economic opportunities are so desperately needed. CDC does exactly that by creating jobs, stimulating growth and supporting local business.
There are currently only a few investors in the world with the skills and risk appetite to create jobs and opportunities in the most difficult frontier markets. CDC is one of those investors. CDC uses its expertise and capital to support over 1,200 businesses in more than 70 developing countries to grow and create jobs. It is a great British success story that has a long history of creating jobs in the developing world.
This is not just about abstract numbers; importantly, it is about investing in people. The life-changing impact of CDC’s investments can be seen in countries such as Sierra Leone, where the UK has supported businesses to get up and running to drive forward the country’s recovery following the devastating Ebola crisis, which killed thousands and damaged the economy. In the words of Henry Macauley, Sierra Leone’s Energy Minister, whom I met just three weeks ago:
“CDC has played an important role in supporting key businesses during the Ebola crisis and continues to do so in Sierra Leone as the economy now recovers. They are an increasingly important investor in the nation’s power sector and I’ve found them to be a great and promising private sector partner.”
The life-changing impact of the CDC’s investment can also be seen through people such as Yvonne, in Uganda. Thanks to a CDC-supported loan, she could buy a vehicle, a scrubbing machine and a vacuum cleaner for her cleaning business and attend training courses. In just 10 years, she had expanded her business from one person to providing jobs for 175 people. It is people such as Yvonne who we should have in our minds as we debate the Bill.
In the past, legitimate concerns were raised about some aspects of the CDC’s performance. That is why, in recent years, the CDC has modernised and transformed its approach. In 2010, DFID undertook a public consultation and an extensive review of the CDC, and began moving the CDC in a new direction, including by bringing in a new board and chair and hiring a new chief executive. Under its new leadership, the CDC has transformed itself. Before 2011, it operated a financial-return-first strategy, with no screening tool to help filter out insufficiently developmental investments.
Keith Vaz
The Secretary of State may have answered this question, or she may be coming on to answer it, but there were concerns about some of the salaries paid to senior officials at the CDC and about the monitoring of administrative costs. Given that we support this organisation, which is moving in the right direction, is she satisfied that there is proper monitoring of that aspect of its work?
Priti Patel
That is an important point. Back in 2009, the CDC’s then chief executive was criticised quite extensively for the level of their salary and other pay, which stood at £970,000. The current chief exec’s total remuneration is now limited to a maximum of £300,000, and that is because the remuneration policies have changed dramatically since 2012. It is also important to reflect on the fact not only that pay across the organisation has been reduced by over 40%, but that compensation is no longer benchmarked, as it was prior to the changes in 2012, against the private equity industry. This is not a private equity firm at all. The CDC is now benchmarked against other development finance institutions, and any bonuses are based on the CDC’s development performance and returns, whereas, previously, they were based solely on financial performance. That has now changed.
Kate Osamor
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I know that he went around Africa in his previous role as a Minister, so he knows a lot about Africa, but there are parts of Ghana where there is no electricity and parts of Ghana where there is no water. Yes, middle-income families may enjoy going to malls, but while many people are living in poverty I do not think that a mall is the best use of CDC resources and money.
The examples that I have given lead me to my third and fourth questions for the Secretary of State. The Government propose to increase funding from £1.5 billion to £6 billion, with the option for the Secretary of State to raise it to £12 billion at a future date. But it seems she is putting the cart before the horse. As yet, the CDC has not published its investment strategy for 2017 to 2021. In the absence of an investment strategy outlining how the additional resources would be spent by the CDC, the Government are essentially proposing that we provide the CDC with a multibillion-pound blank cheque. In 2015, the coalition Government gave the CDC a cash injection of £735 million, and the Secretary of State published the business case for that increased funding at the time. Will the Secretary of State place in the House of Commons Library the full business case for the increase to £6 billion of funding to the CDC? Will she assure the House that if the Government wish to extend that to £12 billion, a business case will be brought to the House?
Keith Vaz
My hon. Friend was in the House when the Secretary of State gave me a very welcome assurance concerning Yemen, which we appreciate. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is so important that emergency and humanitarian aid should be ring-fenced and that any resources to the CDC—whatever they may be, after the business case has been prepared—should not take money away from that emergency and humanitarian aid, which is important in Yemen and in other parts of the world?
Kate Osamor
I thank my right hon. Friend for his intervention. Yes, humanitarian aid is paramount. In times of crisis, we need to know that that money will be ring-fenced to ensure that those who need it most will be able to get it.
During proceedings on the Bill, we will be setting the Government six questions, which we hope they will be able to address and gain our support. I began my response to the Secretary of State’s opening speech on Second Reading today by setting out the key principle that should guide us on international development funding—transparency. Indeed, the lack of transparency over the CDC’s work has created considerable scepticism about its activities and some of its investments. When spending taxpayers’ money on international development in an age of austerity, it behoves the Government to do all in their power to reassure everyone that their money is being spent properly and effectively. The Secretary of State would alleviate some of the concerns felt by Opposition Members—and, I am sure, in the country at large—if she were to insert a transparency clause into the Bill, which would meet the Government’s stated aim and their commitment to transparency, value for money and tracking development results.
That is particularly important when it comes to the CDC’s use of tax havens for its investments. It is extraordinary that the CDC has routed its investments through tax havens. The CDC and DFID have a moral duty to adopt the highest ethical standards if they are to have moral authority as the UK’s leading development actors. We should not be rewarding tax havens with UK taxpayers’ money, and the Government could and should lever the CDC away from the use of tax havens. Not a penny of the proposed £6 billion should find its way to a tax haven, and the Bill should be explicit in enshrining that principle.
Providing any organisation with £6 billion—and potentially £12 billon—is a significant step, and that is particularly true of an organisation with such a chequered recent past. The House would welcome a clear sense from the Secretary of State of how her Department has evaluated the costs and benefits of providing the CDC with such a significant sum of public money. There is a clear need for the Minister to set out how DFID’s investment plans for CDC have been informed. Has that been achieved by assessing other options for investing these resources. Has it been achieved by comparing their value for money and the potential for development impact?
There are two issues that the Secretary of State should address to demonstrate the Government’s commitment to transparency. At present the CDC is not subject to the scrutiny of the Independent Commission for Aid Impact. That is an anomaly, and it should be rectified immediately. Will the Secretary of State insert into the Bill a provision to enable ICAI to scrutinise and audit the effectiveness of the CDC, particularly given the significant increase in the CDC’s funding proposed in this Bill? Secondly, I would like an assurance from the Government that the CDC will not be sold off or privatised during this Parliament. It would, surely, be wrong for this House to provide billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money, only for the CDC to be handed over to a private equity firm or suchlike company.
When the Colonial Development Corporation was established in 1948, it had bold ambitions. For much of its life, the CDC has achieved those ambitions, first as the Colonial Development Corporation and then as the Commonwealth Development Corporation. Lives have been saved and lives have been improved as a direct result of the CDC. Sadly, the CDC has lost its way in recent years. The ethos and values that drove its inception six decades ago have been lost, sacrificed on the altar of fast-buck economics. We are beginning to see some welcome reforms to the CDC, but history has taught us that we must remain vigilant.
As I set out at the beginning of my speech, the Opposition firmly believe in the principle of aid as a vehicle for improving the life chances of millions of people. The question the Government must answer before they gain our full support for the Bill is: will they provide the assurance and the guarantee to deliver what we all seek, which is a CDC that truly lives up to its mission
“to support the building of businesses throughout Africa and South Asia, to create jobs and make a lasting difference to people’s lives in some of the world’s poorest places”?
To achieve this, the Government must place the right safeguards in the Bill in Committee. If they do, and the Bill achieves the twin objectives of supporting the people who need it the most and of making the funding fully transparent, the Government will have our support.
Yemen
Keith Vaz Excerpts(8 years, 1 month ago)
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Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)
I am grateful to the House for allowing this vitally important debate. I was surprised that a Minister from the Department for International Development and not the Foreign Office is representing the Government, as this debate is primarily on foreign affairs matters. Observers have always feared that the FCO would like to take control of DFID: perhaps tonight we are seeing a reverse takeover. The Minister’s knowledge of this area, however, is not in doubt and I am pleased to see him in his place.
This debate occurs at one of the most critical moments in Yemen’s long history. In August, UN-backed peace talks in Kuwait between the Houthi rebels and the Yemeni Government broke down, leading to intense fighting and a restarting of the airstrikes. Thousands have died in the following months. Only last week, 140 people were killed and 500 injured in an airstrike on a funeral in Sana’a. The Saudi Government have now apologised for that incident, blaming the bombing on bad intelligence. What a terrible reason to die.
This morning, a 72-hour ceasefire was announced by UN Special Envoy Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed. It will begin at midnight tomorrow. All our eyes may be on Syria and Iraq, but tonight we in the British Parliament invite the world to focus on Yemen’s forgotten crisis. Our message to the Government is quite simple: either we stop the fighting permanently or Yemen will bleed to death.
I have been privileged to serve as chair of the all-party group on Yemen since joining Parliament. I am very proud that there are so many Members who are interested in Yemen and so many Members present today. Several Members of this House were born in Yemen, including myself, my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz) and the hon. Member for Portsmouth South (Mrs Drummond). She is an officer of the all-party group, along with the hon. Members for Charnwood (Edward Argar) and for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss). Other Members have served the armed forces in Yemen, including the hon. Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart). Those who represent constituencies with large Yemeni communities have worked hard on behalf of their constituents, including my hon. Friends the Members for Liverpool, Wavertree (Luciana Berger), for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg), for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs Ellman) and for Cardiff South and Penarth (Stephen Doughty). This includes the late Harry Harpham, who served as the group’s secretary. I am delighted that his successor, my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Gill Furniss), is equally dedicated. Tomorrow, the group will meet representatives of all of the major charities to hear from the former Foreign Minister of Yemen, Dr Abu-Baker Al-Kirby.
These parliamentary ties further demonstrate the unique relationship our country has had with Yemen over the past 150 years. When Yemen was last in crisis, during the Arab Spring of 2011, it was the British Government, in particular the current Minister of State at the Foreign Office, the right hon. Member for Rutland and Melton (Sir Alan Duncan), who was later the Prime Minister’s envoy to Yemen, who worked with the Yemeni Government. We supported Yemen through that crisis, which, other than Tunisia, was the only peaceful democratic revolution in the middle east. We continue to be one of the largest bilateral aid donors, and the International Development Secretary has just raised our contribution to a total of £100 million. In turn, Yemenis have a great love of Britain. When the Yemeni Foreign Minister Riad Yassin visited Parliament last year, he brought with him a video. It was not a video of the ongoing conflict, which we were aware of, but of our Queen’s last visit to Aden, where the local hospital I was born in was named after her.
This positive history therefore makes the current situation all the more tragic. Through a sluggish, confused and weak approach to the crisis, the international community as a whole should be measured against a scorecard of shame: over 10,000 people have been killed in the past 18 months; at least 1,200 children have been killed, with another 1,700 injured; 3 million people are now suffering from acute malnutrition; 21.2 million people, four-fifths of the entire population, require urgent humanitarian assistance, 9.9 million of whom are children; 3.2 million people are internally displaced; 19.3 million people are in need of health care and protection services; and 14.1 million people, equivalent to the combined populations of London, Birmingham and Glasgow, are at risk of hunger.
Kirsten Oswald (East Renfrewshire) (SNP)
The impact on the most vulnerable in society in Yemen is simply immeasurable. It is our job in this House to stand up against what is wrong. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that we are instead enabling that?
Keith Vaz
I agree wholeheartedly with the hon. Lady. I commend her party and its Members for the way in which they have raised Yemen on so many occasions. I am grateful, and the House is very grateful, for that. She is right that we need to do much more. Organisations such as Save the Children, UNICEF, Islamic Relief, Médecins sans Frontières and the Red Cross are performing wonders on the ground, but they are struggling to get the funding needed for emergency programmes.
Dr Rosena Allin-Khan (Tooting) (Lab)
My right hon. Friend will be interested to know that I recently travelled to the World Bank with RESULTS UK to put forward the argument that the first 1,000 days of a child’s life are vital for their development. This means that even when the conflict ends, the effects will not stop. They will not cease. Millions of children will be left stunted with delayed cognitive development and may still die, despite the conflict ending. Does my right hon. Friend agree that we need to be doing more to find a peaceful solution?
Keith Vaz
I do, and I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. I agree wholeheartedly.
When faced with a crisis of these proportions, one would have expected, as my hon. Friend has said, that the international community, led by the UK, would be urgently bringing the conflict to an end, and putting this at the very top of the agenda at the United Nations. Instead, when faced by this reality, the world has failed Yemen. We failed to stop the escalation of violence in March last year, and we failed to stop the fighting over the last 18 months. We have had two clear opportunities for a sustainable end to the fighting: a brief ceasefire for negotiations in April this year ended in failure; and the UN-sponsored round of talks in Kuwait ended in failure in August. Will the Minister confirm whether or not the UK Government were invited to these negotiations? Were we actually in the room?
Edward Argar (Charnwood) (Con)
The right hon. Gentleman’s knowledge of, and care for, the country of Yemen is well known. Does he agree that what would make the greatest difference to the humanitarian situation in Yemen would be a stable ceasefire followed by a long-term sustainable peace settlement, and that while that settlement must originate from among the Yemeni peoples themselves and not be imposed from outside, the unique historical relationship that the UK has with Yemen, to which the right hon. Gentleman was alluding, makes us well placed to help facilitate the delivery of that settlement, building on the work of the Minister for Europe and the Americas, my right hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton (Sir Alan Duncan)?
Keith Vaz
I agree with the hon. Gentleman, who is vice-chairman of the all-party group. He is right to highlight, as I have done, the role of the right hon. Member for Rutland and Melton. There is a vacancy for a special envoy for Yemen, and if I could persuade the Prime Minister to send him there, among all his other duties, the right hon. Gentleman would make a very good contribution.
Amid this lack of diplomatic progress, the intervention by the Saudi-led coalition has become central to the crisis. This coalition intervened at the request of the legitimate Government of Yemen. However, 18 months on, the airstrikes, which are heavily impacting on the civilian population, have become counter-productive—so counter-productive that it has become the eye of a storm of intense criticism, which overshadows every other element of the crisis. These airstrikes, which Save the Children believes to be responsible for 60% of all civilian deaths in the conflict, are breeding hostility inside and outside Yemen.
Stephen Doughty (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)
My right hon. Friend is making a strong speech. He will be aware of the reports of the International Development Committee and the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee on this very matter, but is he aware that yesterday a number of us, along with UK Government Ministers, met the Saudi Foreign Minister? While we had a frank and candid discussion about the terrible attack on the funeral hall, the Saudi Foreign Minister refused to give any clarity about when and to what level investigations would take place into the hundreds of other incidents reported by leading non-governmental organisations. Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is imperative that the Saudis are clear about what has happened in those incidents and allow an independent investigation?
Douglas Chapman (Dunfermline and West Fife) (SNP)
We all recognise and welcome moves for a ceasefire. However, two Select Committees have endorsed the view that UK arms exports to Saudi Arabia should cease. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that the Government should respect the findings of those Committees and stop arms sales until a proper investigation into the atrocities in Yemen takes place, or indeed a permanent ceasefire is put in place?
Dr Philippa Whitford (Central Ayrshire) (SNP)
It is the issue of the extra petrol that we are pouring on the flames that is key. I have raised on a number of occasions the bombing of Médecins Sans Frontières hospitals, particularly in Sana’a last autumn. We are always told that “Saudi Arabia will investigate”, but that is not good enough. We should not be selling arms in this situation.
Chris White
I know that a couple of questions have been asked by Members who have served on the Committees—
Chris White
I am aware that the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) is familiar with a report in which the Business, Innovation and Skills and International Development Committees called for an independent United Nations-led investigation and a pause in the sale of arms exports until that had taken place. Does he agree that that could only assist in alleviating the humanitarian crisis?
Mrs Flick Drummond (Portsmouth South) (Con)
Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the United States Congress recently passed the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, which is aimed at the Saudis? Does he think that that is why the Saudis are starting to scale back some of their attacks?
Keith Vaz
My fellow Yemeni—by birth—is right. I think that the pressure in the United States Congress, to which I shall allude later, is making a difference, especially given recent events. I think that it takes more than the United Kingdom to do this and that Congress has a very important role.
Margaret Ferrier (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (SNP)
The right hon. Gentleman is being extremely generous in giving way to all of us. He is probably aware of the use of cluster munitions in Yemen and the problems that they have caused for civilians by lying unexploded, thus creating de facto minefields which can kill or maim. Will he join me in calling on the Government to review the support that they are giving to the organisations involved in clearing those munitions?
Keith Vaz
Yes, I will. We do need to support those organisations. I think that I am able to give way so often thanks to the BBC debate running a little short. Whether we like or hate the BBC, we should thank it for allowing us this extra time.
A generation of Yemenis now risk learning how to hate Saudi Arabia and the west. At a recent meeting organised by the Council for the Advancement of Arab-British Understanding, journalists Nawal al-Maghafi and Peter Oborne, who had recently returned from Yemen, said that the long history of goodwill towards Britain was almost eroded. The strength of that criticism means that when we are critical of Russia’s actions in Syria, it is now pointing at Yemen and claiming moral equivalency. That is not sustainable. Yemen is now the Achilles heel of western diplomacy. Quite simply, it is in everyone’s best interests, including Saudi Arabia’s, for the airstrikes to end permanently.
Martin Docherty-Hughes (West Dunbartonshire) (SNP)
I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on initiating the debate. Does he agree that if the United Kingdom Government’s review of its arms sales uncovers breaches of international law by the kingdom of Saudi Arabia in Yemen, there should be not only an end to the sales of arms to Saudi Arabia, but a root-and-branch review of our relationship with the kingdom?
Keith Vaz
That is a very important point. The Chair of the Committees on Arms Export Controls will have heard what the hon. Gentleman has said. I think that this is one of the issues that the Committees, and other Committees of the House, will have to examine—indeed, they are doing so as we speak.
Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)
Will my right hon. Friend give way?
Mr Deputy Speaker
I have succeeded where the right hon. Gentleman could not.
Keith Vaz
I will put that in my diary, Mr Deputy Speaker.
Let me return to the serious issue of Yemen. The issues of the investigations of the bombings, which have been mentioned by several Members, and the UK’s sale of arms to Saudi Arabia have been raised here tonight, and also outside Parliament. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, as well as Oxfam, Amnesty International and others, have identified, as have hon. Members this evening, the human rights violations committed by all sides. The latter of those organisations argues that DFID’s good work is being undermined by £3.3 billion of aircraft and bombs sales to Saudi Arabia in the 12 months from March 2015.
The Saudi Arabian Government have investigated incidents, but these investigations have been criticised for not being independent. They must understand that continuing the bombing campaign will lead only to more incidents and criticism, and calls for further investigations.
We are joined by the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, the hon. Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood), and I am grateful to him for reinforcing the Government’s position tonight. Only one of the Ministers present will be able to speak in this debate, but I would like them both to clarify a number of points. What support is the UK providing Saudi Arabia with regards to both preventing and investigating human rights violations, including through providing personnel? What is the UK’s policy on an independent investigation into possible human rights violations by all sides in the conflict? What is the current status of UK arms sales to Saudi Arabia, and will this be subject to review?
Just as it is darkest before the dawn, the international community is finally moving in the right direction. After the Houthis fired on the USS Mason last week, the Americans fired back, into Yemen, for the first time in this conflict. Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump talked about Syria at length in their last debate; it is hoped that they will be asked about Yemen tomorrow. Let us not forget that Secretary Clinton was the first Secretary of State in history to visit Yemen.
On Sunday, in London, US Secretary of State John Kerry and the Foreign Secretary met Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir and the UN special envoy to discuss this conflict. At the meeting, they made a very clear call for a ceasefire “within hours”. An hour is clearly a long time in diplomacy, but at last today a 72-hour ceasefire has been announced. This is most welcome, but it is not the end. Seventy-two hours is not enough for the Yemeni people. It is vital that our Government ensure that the ceasefire becomes permanent.
Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con)
I have been listening with interest to the right hon. Gentleman’s speech. He made reference to the Houthis firing on a US naval ship. Does he agree that one of the things that is so worrying about the conflict is the possibility of threating some of the key shipping routes that pass through Aden, which might destabilise the whole region?
Keith Vaz
That is absolutely right. As I will say towards the end of my speech, that has an effect on the humanitarian aid getting into Yemen.
I spoke last night with the UK’s permanent representative to the United Nations, the excellent Matthew Rycroft, who made it clear that the UK leads on this issue at the Security Council. He also confirmed that the UK had already drafted a Security Council resolution. It will call for an end to hostilities, investigations into human rights violations and a restart of the negotiations. It is in response to this that Saudi Arabia and the other gulf states have put together their own pre-emptive ceasefire. That is clearly welcome, but will the Minister confirm that if the coalition’s ceasefire breaks in 72 hours’ time and violence resumes, the UK will immediately demand that the draft resolution is tabled? Will he also confirm that when Yemen is discussed by the Security Council in New York on 31 October, the United Kingdom will demand a joint statement calling for a permanent diplomatic solution?
Now that the ceasefire is in place, we must take a central role in the peace talks. Will the Minister confirm who will be in the room for these talks? Will the talks include the United Kingdom, the United States, the Saudi Government, the Houthis, former President Saleh and the Yemeni Government? It needs to be made clear at the talks that concluding without an agreement is not an option. As her predecessors have done, will the Prime Minister herself call on both King Salman of Saudi Arabia and President Hadi to press for peace?
Despite the criticism that the United Kingdom has faced in recent months, we can still be the honest broker, and that means putting pressure on all sides, including those who receive British support. Is the United Kingdom prepared to sanction the Yemeni and Saudi Governments by withdrawing support, suspending arms sales or in other ways if they allow the next round of negotiations to fail? We also need to give the UN special envoy all the tools that he needs to do his job. Will the Minister tell the House what support, including staff and finances, we have provided to the special envoy?
Another step that we need to take relates to humanitarian access. This is vital not only to address the humanitarian crisis, but to show that the United Kingdom wishes to act for the Yemeni people. In the scorecard of shame that I mentioned, I have set out the reality in Yemen, which is an extraordinarily dangerous place for aid agencies to work. Some parts of the country, particularly in the north, are practically unreachable. Following the closure of Sana’a airport, the cutting off of major roads and bridges and the withdrawal of safety assurances, UNICEF has informed me that many aid agencies have withdrawn from Saada and Hajjah. The increase in aid is welcome, but what are we doing to ensure that it gets through? We must do more, and this must be included in the UN resolution.
Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)
I am glad that the right hon. Gentleman has once again brought this subject to the House for debate. It is important that these issues are raised. He talks about access for aid agencies, which is absolutely crucial. Médecins sans Frontières is finding it very difficult to maintain hospitals in the country and reports that, even where there are hospitals, the situation is so unsafe and people are so frightened to leave their homes that by the time they reach the hospital, they are often seriously ill, with some of them sadly dying. Will he impress on the Government that we need to act in support of those medical facilities as well?
Keith Vaz
The hon. Lady has just done that very eloquently. The worst part of the bombing of the funeral was that there were two bombs. The first killed the people at the funeral and the second was intended to deal with the first attenders. To say that such incidents are the result of bad information is a terrible excuse and that must never happen again.
I would like to end by telling the House that my interest in Yemen is not just political, but deeply personal. Yemen was once known as Arabia Felix, or “happy Arabia”, and that is how I remember the country. The first nine years of my life were among my happiest. Every night when I go home from this place, I think of Aden, and I light frankincense just to remind me of it. Yemen is an easy country to fall in love with. It has incredible beauty, enormous history and wonderful people. Its geography and its architecture are among the most stunning in the world. It is renowned as the home of the legendary Queen of Sheba. It breaks my heart that incredible cultural heritage sites are being reduced to rubble by the fighting and that we will never be able to recreate them. We are part of this conflict; we cannot walk by on the other side. This is a crisis crying out for leadership. Saudi Arabia, the Yemeni Government, the Houthis and the Yemeni people all need a way out of this conflict. We are in a unique position to show them the way, and to take them there.
It has been said to me that we hold all the pens on Yemen. We need to use every ounce of our considerable influence. Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm. To allow millions of people to die from hunger in the 21st century would consign Yemen to being one of history’s great tragedies. Let us seize the momentum of the past few days and prevent a humanitarian crisis from becoming a humanitarian catastrophe. I beg the Minister to act now.
The Minister of State, Department for International Development (Rory Stewart)
I begin by paying huge tribute to the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz). For as long as I have been in the House and long before I entered the House, he has been a great champion of the interests of Yemen. He understands Yemen, as he pointed out, from his early childhood and brings to the issue a level of knowledge and passion that is important in the House. Everyone on both sides of House has emphasised that the situation is a horrible tragedy—nearly 80% of the population currently face a humanitarian crisis. More than 1 million children face food shortages and almost 400,000 literally struggle to know where the next meal will come from.
I will take a couple of moments to talk about the causes and origins of the conflict, because it is important to consider them when addressing it. When I last visited Yemen in the spring of 2014, despite all the underlying fragility—the considerable south-north divides, the sectarian splits between the Houthis and other members of Yemeni society, and the extreme poverty—we were looking at a situation in which the national dialogue seemed to be working. There was a remarkable period of relative stability between 2011 and 2014. I pay tribute to Benomar, who was the UN special envoy at the time, and to the extraordinary work of the ambassadors from the Gulf Co-operation Council, the EU ambassador, who had served in Afghanistan and spoke fluent Arabic, the US ambassador, who was a fluent Arabist, and the French ambassador, who also spoke fluent Arabic. Unfortunately, however, despite all the work done in 2014, the situation deteriorated rapidly so that by the beginning of 2015 we found ourselves facing the horror that we see today. There are certain lessons that we need to draw from that to understand how we went wrong and to solve future conflicts.
The first and central thing is to apportion blame. We cannot shy away from the fact that the actions of ex-President Saleh and the Houthis are at the core of the conflict. They attacked the legitimate Government in Sana’a and propagated this conflict. There is also a broader context that the international community must recognise and take responsibility for. The national dialogue that I saw in 2014 did not do what it was supposed to do. In retrospect, it focused too much on an elite in Sana’a and did not reach out enough to the rural populations. It was not genuinely inclusive and left a situation in which the Houthis in particular felt that the federal deal offered to them was unfair and that the area that they had been allocated was too small and without access to the sea.
Partly through pressure on President Hadi to reduce fuel subsidies, international development actors helped to create a situation in which instability was encouraged by the cutting of those fuel subsidies—although much of the responsibility must lie with President Hadi and how he implemented the cuts. Corruption in Sana’a and Yemen was also a huge mobiliser of popular resentment against the Government and that was not adequately addressed.
Keith Vaz
I thank the Minister for his kind comments. He is giving an impressive exposition of what went wrong. We, like the Americans, are great supporters of Yemen, so should we have done more at the time to monitor the situation and to move the dialogue in the right direction? Did we withdraw far too early?
Rory Stewart
I pay tribute to Jane Marriott, our ambassador at the time, to the work done by her predecessor, John Wilkes, and to the DFID work that took place behind the scenes. Such things are difficult and I am not in the business of second guessing officials, but the lesson we should draw from all these conflicts is the one that I pointed to earlier: the international community must be cautious not to become over-optimistic and to be aware of the ways in which talking to an elite in the capital and engaging with the civil society in Sana’a misled us about the real resentment that existed in the countryside.
How do we address the situation now? Central to that is understanding that decades of ex-President Saleh’s policies lie underneath the problems we face today. He deliberately exacerbated those tribal divisions, and deliberately created that culture of corruption and impunity, which he is now so expertly exploiting in order to maintain instability in that country. But we cannot be naive here: simply removing ex-President Saleh is not going to solve this problem on its own. The problems in Yemen go much deeper than that and need to be addressed systematically, from politics through to the humanitarian dimension.
Let me touch on those two things. As the right hon. Gentleman pointed out, politics is at the centre of this—politics, politics, politics. Characteristically, he asked 10 questions, which I have to deal with in less than 10 minutes, but I will try to deal with them quickly before moving on. Hon. Members will notice that his 10 questions have largely focused on what I would call the high politics and diplomacy, and I will try to address them one by one and then take this into the bigger issue of the solution to the Yemeni conflict. First, he asked what the UK’s position is in relation to the Kuwait talks. The answer is that those talks were held between the parties in the conflict—the regional players and the Yemenis themselves. The UK ambassador to Yemen was present and was in the room, but in a diplomatic capacity and not as a party to the conflict.
Secondly, the right hon. Gentleman asked what support we are providing to Saudi Arabia. The current operations are, of course, Saudi-led, and the United Kingdom is not embedded in the Saudi military operations. As the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood) pointed out in his statement today, we are very clear that the investigation needs to be led, in the first instance, by the Saudi Government, just as similar investigations of the United States or the United Kingdom Governments for actions taking place in Afghanistan and Iraq were led first and foremost by those Governments. He has said, however, that if that investigation is not adequate, he will look at this again.
Rory Stewart
I am happy to provide more detail, but, in essence, we currently provide two forms of support and I will elaborate on this in a written answer. We provide training and capacity support, which includes statements about international humanitarian law, but that is not about this military operation—that is in general for the royal Saudi air force. Secondly, my Department and the Foreign Office have worked together through the UN process on international humanitarian law, particularly in a meeting in Geneva last month—this is partly in response to the question raised by the right hon. Member for Leicester East—where we are pushing for more staffing for the independent UN investigation on human rights through the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and, in particular, its Yemen office.
The right hon. Gentleman asked a question about arms sales. We take those sales very seriously. As Members from both sides of the House are aware, the report by the Committees on Arms Export Controls was divided, but we continue to monitor carefully all actions of international humanitarian law, although this is not a prime responsibility of my Department. He asked whether we would be in the room for peace talks, and we absolutely will. Our current ambassador, Edmund Fitton-Brown, is very close to the UN representative, and so long as these are not talks taking place between the parties to the conflict, the UK is present in a diplomatic capacity.
The right hon. Gentleman asked whether the Prime Minister would be prepared to call King Salman of Saudi Arabia and President Hadi. Of course, as the right hon. Gentleman is aware, on Sunday the Foreign Secretary met the Saudi Foreign Minister, but more than that the Saudi Foreign Minister came to this House of Commons yesterday to be directly accountable to this Parliament. Indeed, the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East spoke to President Hadi in a visit to Saudi Arabia last week. The right hon. Gentleman asked about sanctions. Of course we will continue to put pressure on all parties to this conflict to support the current peace. He asked whether we are providing support for the special envoy, and the answer is that the UK Government are providing more than £1 million of direct support for the staff of Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, the UN special envoy to Yemen.
In the remaining minutes, I hope to talk about the broader context, in addition to all the good 10 points the right hon. Gentleman raised. We need to look at politics at local and regional level.
Keith Vaz
This must be a first—a Minister is given a set of questions and he replies to every one of them. I do not think that I have ever come across that in my 29 years in this House—well done. Will the hon. Gentleman address the issue of the ceasefire? We know that we have 72 hours. Can we please try to ensure that it is longer, because 72 hours is not enough? I know that there are many other things to talk about, but that ceasefire is critical.
Rory Stewart
We absolutely agree that the ceasefire is critical and that 72 hours in and of itself is not enough, but as the right hon. Gentleman is so aware the only way in which we can do any kind of peace or conflict resolution all the way from sub-Saharan Africa right the way through to Cambodia is to start with small steps. It is vital to begin with those 72-hour moves. That is why the UN special envoy has done it and why we and the United States are strongly supportive of it. We will of course do all we can to extend that ceasefire, because we do need longer. Indeed, what we want is a permanent political settlement in place, which brings me to the broader question of politics. There are two dimensions to that: we need to acknowledge that this is taking place in a broader peninsula context, and that lasting peace will come only if we address the local-level conflicts taking place on the ground in Yemen. Our humanitarian response—this is a debate about the humanitarian crisis—needs to take that into account.
I wish to make some brief observations on the nature of DFID’s humanitarian response. First, we need to approach this with some degree of humility. The right hon. Gentleman has quite rightly pointed to the important role that the United Kingdom plays. We do indeed hold the pen at the Security Council. We have put £100 million into this, and it is true that we play an important role in the Quad, but we are not the only people here and we cannot act as though we are. We have to make sure that we acknowledge the role of the United States, Saudi Arabia, and other states such as Oman, but above all we must acknowledge the role of the Yemeni people themselves. The only real solution here will come from the Yemeni people. We need to acknowledge again that, although the United Kingdom has put in £100 million, the current UN appeal is only 47% met. We were very pleased at the UN General Assembly to raise another £50 million from other partners, but we still need to do much more.
We cannot at the moment, as an international community, adequately address all the 21 million people who are currently at risk, so we need to prioritise. We need to make sure that we focus on the most vulnerable people. First, we need to protect civilians; secondly, we need to make absolutely sure that we focus on food security—it is an absolute tragedy that we are seeing extremes of malnutrition and we must make sure that that does not turn into a famine; and thirdly, we need to make it absolutely certain that, whenever we are dealing with anyone in Yemen, we look at preventable disease. It is a tragedy that cholera is now breaking out in Sana’a.
Commerce and shipping will be absolutely central. We need to get the markets working, get the ships into Yemen, and understand that this is not just a development and a humanitarian response.
I will finish by paying tribute to the right hon. Gentleman, to the very strong work both of the UK Government and of the UN special envoy Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, and to the extraordinary work of the humanitarian organisations, which work in very difficult circumstances. I am talking about the suffering that has been experienced by Mercy Corps, the International Committee of the Red Cross and Médecins Sans Frontières. Above all, it is the Yemenis—not just internationals—who are bearing the burden of this, who are out in those field offices, and who are delivering aid in some of the most testing conditions on earth. If we can plan now for the medium to long term, think hard about the stabilisation and the politics that are at the root of this, and ensure that we get the economic framework in place so that if we are lucky enough to have a ceasefire, we are really able to move to a situation in which we have a sustainable economy in Yemen for the future. If we can sometimes do less than we pretend, we can do much more than we fear.
Question put and agreed to.
Refugee Family Reunion Rules
Keith Vaz Excerpts(8 years, 5 months ago)
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Keir Starmer (Holborn and St Pancras) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bone. I, too, congratulate the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) on securing the debate and on the tone of his contribution. The reference to his family was a powerful way of driving home the point about the cut-off point at age 18. We often say in the House that there is a refugee crisis on a scale not seen since the second world war—and that is right: we have seen the numbers from last year and this year. However, we have a tendency—into which I myself fall—to talk in terms of numbers. Bringing some humanity to the topic is important, and that is what happened when the right hon. Gentleman spoke.
We must remember that refugees are mums, dads, children, brothers, sisters and grandparents, and are all fleeing from persecution over borders in the best way they can in the circumstances. We do not often refer to them, first and foremost, as families, but they are families who are often disintegrated and split because of the circumstances in which they have to leave a particular country or situation. We must always remember that, as it reminds us why we must always distinguish between refugees and others who move—immigrants in the broader sense of the word. We must recognise that it is a different context and set of circumstances, and that different rules ought to apply. One problem is rules that are intended to apply to immigration broadly being applied to the sub-group of refugees.
We must always remember that refugees come from many countries across the world, not just Syria. We often refer to the situation in Syria because it is so terrible, but there are other countries in which there are terrible situations and from which refugees are on the move. One of my concerns, which I have raised with the Minister and in the House a number of times, is about the potential in this country for a debate to emerge that takes a two-tier approach to refugees, with Syrians being seen in one context and other refugees in another. We must keep reminding ourselves to bear in mind not just Syria, but the very many other places from which people are fleeing.
Reunification is a particularly good example of rules intended to apply across the board not working well in relation to refugees. That is why I welcome this debate, the campaign being run by the British Red Cross, and the work of UNICEF and the Refugee Council on unaccompanied children and reunification in particular. I echo the comments of other hon. Members: we need to remember that reunification is important because families want to reunify. We live as families and when we are split and have to cross borders, we want to reunify as families. The family unit is a powerful human need. In this context, by having more flexible, wider rules on family reunification, we limit, at least to some extent, the extent to which people make dangerous journeys that they would not otherwise have to make, because they would have a safe and legal route for getting from where they are to where they need to be to reunify with their families. We must bear both those points in mind.
The reunification rules, like many aspects of the refugee framework, are under strain given the events of the last year or two. However, it is time to look again at the reunification rules in the round. I saw for myself the situation in Calais and Dunkirk earlier this year, where it was evident that there were unaccompanied children. When I went to Calais in January, there were about 130 or so unaccompanied children, but at least they had been counted and identified to the best ability of those who were there.
When I was in Dunkirk—things have changed since I was there—nobody was in a position even to identify and count the number of unidentified children there. That demonstrated the mismatch between the approach we have to children in this country and the approach that was applied in Calais and Dunkirk. When I visited, I went on the Eurostar from London and the journey took one hour. It was extraordinary that there should be a place such as Calais or Dunkirk where there were unaccompanied children who were not being assisted in the way that I would hope they would be if they were in the UK.
In the UK, we have recognised for many years that if children are to exercise their rights to reunification—or, indeed, any rights—somebody has to assist them to do so. It is simply not good enough to say to a child, “There is a mechanism. Why don’t you access it?” There has to be somebody to assist in that process.
Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)
I am sorry to have missed the opening remarks of the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael). My hon. and learned Friend will know from his visit to Calais of the concern about the 157 unaccompanied children, all of whom appear to have links with families in this country.
In the Bishop of Durham’s evidence to the Select Committee on Home Affairs on Tuesday, he said in answer to a question I put that he believed that the children should already be here. Does my hon. and learned Friend agree that where links can be demonstrated and have been established—not as a matter of rule, otherwise it will encourage more people just to send their children—the children ought to be allowed to join their families here?
Keir Starmer
Yes, they should be allowed to join their families here. The rules provide for that and they need to be effectively applied. That means somebody assisting in the process on the ground. I was particularly struck at Dunkirk that there were simply no officials at all in the camp when I was there. The only officials were gendarmes on the gate, whose sole function was to stop people bringing pallets on to the site, which they wanted because the ground was so wet that they simply needed to get the tents off the ground. That was the only official presence in Dunkirk.
It is not just about the right to reunification; it is about that being within a reasonable timeframe. Months go by and that is a long time for a child. Those children are on their own and they are particularly vulnerable. We have had debates about the number of children missing in Europe; some months ago, Europol put out a figure of 10,000. Time is measured differently by children, as we all know, and those children are not only young, but vulnerable. They should not be in parts of Europe or the rest of the world without assistance. This is about the speed of the exercise.
Keir Starmer
That challenge was brought by, among others, lawyers working in Doughty Street Chambers—the chambers that I am still associated with. I think the children arrived in St Pancras, which is in my constituency. That demonstrated how quickly things could happen if a court approved the process. In fairness, it is not for me to tell the Minister what approach the Government should take to the appeal, but clearly speed is of the essence. There have to be practical and effective ways for children and their families to exercise the rights to which they are entitled. It is marked that there are still children relatively near, in parts of northern Europe, who have a right to reunification here but that the process is working far too slowly.
It is often said that when we respond to refugee children on their own, in Europe or elsewhere, there is a risk that if too much is done, it will encourage others to follow their path. I have been very cautious about that argument for two reasons. First, although when we talk about immigration more widely we might have to engage with the pull factor argument, when we talk about refugees we should recognise and focus on the push factors. Refugees are fleeing. Over the years, families have split as they have fled across borders. Secondly, there are children right here, right now who are already on their own in different parts of the world. For my part, and I expect for everyone else, I am not going to say, “We mustn’t extend the support that they need right here, right now lest others follow in their wake.”
Keith Vaz
I am most grateful to my hon. and learned Friend for giving way to me a second time. I agree with him, but does he not agree that we need to be careful about messages? The first people who pick up such messages are the people traffickers and the organised criminal gangs, and we simply have not done enough to address those gangs. They are the people who are able to transport individuals, and they are the people who prey on the vulnerable. They never put their lives at risk in the Mediterranean. We and our EU partners, including Frontex, need to do much more to deal with them.
Keir Starmer
I heartily agree and endorse every word. Ultimately, the refugee crisis will be addressed effectively only if we start at the very top, which means de-escalating the violence, and then work upstream to stop the work of those who are engaged in trafficking and putting people through the illegal and dangerous routes. I completely agree with that. In a sense, what we are discussing this afternoon is what we do much further down the line, when people and children have arrived in Europe. I am simply cautioning against the argument that has been made in the House when we have debated similar issues—although not in today’s debate—that it would somehow be wrong in principle to provide the support and assistance that is needed in Europe lest other people follow.
The problems highlighted by the British Red Cross’s campaign are real. Where over-18s were living with their family before the family split and fled across the world because of persecution, they are, of course, over the age of 18, but still vulnerable and still wanting to reunify with their family for the reasons powerfully put earlier in the debate. Refugee children not being able to sponsor family members is an issue where there simply is not sufficient flexibility to address the injustices that arise. There is the unresolved question of wider family members beyond mothers, fathers and children, and there is the problem of there having been no legal aid since 2013. As the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on legal aid, I take it particularly seriously that since 2013 it has been difficult to mount effective challenges unless lawyers are prepared to act on a pro bono basis, which is not how we should be proceeding on such issues in this country.
Labour has pressed these issues. Our amendment 122A to the Immigration Bill was defeated in the House of Lords, so there have been efforts, but it is good that we are debating the issue again today—not to resurrect those discussions in the other place, but to step back and ask: is it now time for that wider review? I call on the Government to look at and review the entire framework for family reunification, and I ask the Minister to make a commitment to that effect and to update us on the ongoing review of the Dublin III arrangements.
Richard Harrington
I would find it hard to disagree with that point. I feel, and I hope that most right hon. and hon. Members agree, that this country has a very good reputation for accepting refugees not just historically but in the present day. Although I am sure that no one would suggest that our asylum system is perfect, it has certainly become speedier, allowing people not to live in such lengthy periods of limbo by making determinations comparatively quickly. I agree that those periods can still be shortened, and I hope they will be shortened. I hope that the financial package offered by the Government for the Syrian resettlement programme and other resettlement programmes shows that the Government are committed to enabling people to live proper and decent lives once they arrive here. When refugees arrive here, I agree that hopefully it is job done on human safety, but on their leading fulfilled and proper lives it is the beginning of the end, or the end of the beginning—it is not for me to quote Churchill, or to mess it up, but I hope right hon. and hon. Members will know what I mean. It is the beginning of a process, as the Government have realised in, for example, the funding of the five-year resettlement programme. I hope that many of those refugees and their families will not need the funding, because I hope they will be able to work and get the benefits of life generally, but the Government realise that it is important that that funding is available.
I apologise to the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland; the point that I wanted to make about family reunion was that the Syrian resettlement programme is predominantly for families. More than 50% are children, but within family groups. The Government are not completely oblivious to the issue. However, I return to his specific points about family reunion. His first ask was simple compared with the others: would I meet the Red Cross and the Refugee Council? I am happy to meet them, but I do anyway. I am happy to meet them on any occasion; in fact, I would have met most of them this morning, except that I could not have got to east London and back in time for this debate.
If the right hon. Gentleman would like to facilitate further meetings, I am happy to go to them, but I assure him that the Red Cross and the Refugee Council are partners of ours in many things. I know that the Minister for Immigration met the Red Cross to discuss many of these issues today, but I am happy to do so as well.
As part of the latest review of the family reunion policy, we have listened carefully to many arguments in favour of widening the criteria and effectively creating another resettlement programme for family reunion alone. The debates in both Houses during the passage of the recent Bill, and in the wider community—including representations received for this debate—demonstrate the level of compassion felt about the issue. Unquestionably, right hon. and hon. Members have made eloquent and forcible arguments in this debate for doing so.
We recognise that families may be separated by conflict and persecution. It happens quickly, and the speed and manner of it is often not controlled. The motivation of most people is unquestionably just to get to their family in the UK. However, it is easy in discussions like these not to stress that we already do a lot of family reunification. In the last five years, there have been about 22,000 successful cases of family reunification. It is often not mentioned that in our programme for Syrian resettlement, family reunification is a criterion in its own right, quite apart from the other vulnerability criteria for acceptance.
The reunification system takes into account some of the points made by the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland. It does not involve visiting a British embassy abroad; the point has been made about how difficult and dangerous that can be. It involves registering with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and going through an interview process with the UNHCR, which I have witnessed. It is lengthy, but it is not dissimilar to the type of interview that might happen at Lunar House in Croydon or other centres in the UK. Family reunification is one of the five criteria, even without the other matters. People are then brought here on one of our charter flights and resettled with their family, with an immediate right to work on a humanitarian protection visa. That is often not mentioned in the context of family reunion, but such people are coming through the Syrian system now.
At this juncture, I would like to say in the presence of the erudite and eloquent Chairman of the Select Committee on Home Affairs, the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), who came to join us today, that the comment that the Government would probably not make its target of 20,000 during this Parliament is not correct. We are well on track, and we have recently added to the target the up to 3,000 children at risk whom we are taking under the—
Richard Harrington
The right hon. Gentleman is hoping to intervene, and of course he will, but I will just finish my sentence—or page, or paragraph, in the hope that we run out of time. Excuse my humour, Mr Bone. That is an additional 3,000 children, not just from Syria and the countries around Syria; it is from the middle east and north Africa as well, and it can include non-Syrians.
Keith Vaz
The Minister does not need to carry on talking, because I am rising to praise him. Universally, all those who have dealt with him have pointed out that he has done a great job as Minister for Syrian refugees. Our concern is that speculation about the target is not helped by the Government’s refusal to publish figures monthly. The Minister will know that from his last appearance before the Committee. He keeps telling us that the figures will be published in the quarterly results. However, because he is doing a brilliant job, it would help his case if he published those figures more readily so people knew of the good work that is being done.
Richard Harrington
I must compose myself after that intervention. I thank the right hon. Gentleman for what he said. It is true that the Home Office publishes the targets on a quarterly basis, but the resettlement targets are broken down—
Richard Harrington
I beg your pardon; yes. I meant “results”. The right hon. Gentleman makes me nervous, Mr Bone. I do not know why, because he is a very nice chap and I respect him a lot. The results are published quarterly, and are now broken down by local authority region. That is significantly more information than he felt was previously available.
Richard Harrington
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. I point out—I was going to mention this a little further on—that there will be revised guidance on immigration rules, and many of the points mentioned in this debate will be taken into consideration. If he bears with me, I hope to satisfy him, if not in content then by showing that I am trying to answer some of the questions raised. However, I must make the point that there are already several ways for families to be reunited and the resettlement schemes are part of that.
Our family reunion policy allows immediate family members of those granted protection here or who were part of the family before the sponsor fled their country to reunite in the UK. It reflects our obligations under the refugee convention. As I have said, we work closely with the UNHCR to include the most vulnerable people in the Syrian resettlement scheme.
The Immigration Act 2016, which passed very recently, announced our intention to resettle from Europe a number of unaccompanied refugee children, mentioned extensively by all right hon. and hon. Members here, particularly the shadow Minister. Under that initiative, we will prioritise family links in the UK. A point has been made about the speed at which family reunification takes place. It has been described as far too slow, and we should do what we can to ensure that the Dublin process works far more quickly for the sake of such children, some of whom the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland has seen on his visits to Calais, Dunkirk and elsewhere. Again, that is not a point that we completely ignore.
At the moment, we are meeting many of the organisations that have been mentioned today and other member states to find ways to make this process much quicker. The Immigration Minister has been in Greece and senior officials have been to Italy and France to discuss how it is done. There is no question about it—we agree that the system has to be speeded up. That is why earlier in the year we sent a UK expert to France and why we now have a permanent secondee in the Italian Dublin unit. Shortly, we will be seconding further people to Greece. We have already offered 75 asylum and immigration experts to assist Greece in operating the hotspots; 18 have already been deployed and are working there and the rest are in the process of being deployed.
We are really looking at entry clearance timetables, including with the Red Cross, which the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald) mentioned. It is open to applicants to tell us when they want the visa to take effect—we are not going slowly. Sometimes there is the implication that we are trying to make the process go slowly to stop people from wanting family reunification.
This is a difficult field. The shadow Minister and the right hon. Member for Leicester East, the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee, mentioned people traffickers. There is not a single member of this House who could disagree with anything that has been said about people traffickers. However, family reunification is vulnerable to people traffickers.
For example, we have heard—I accept that this is just the sort of thing that people hear, but it has been heard by people on the ground—that there were 50 people on the Bosnian-Macedonian border who claimed to have the same uncle in a village in Sweden. The people traffickers actually tell people to say that they have family in different countries, even down to individuals. I hope that right hon. and hon. Members would not think that that means that I think “Oh, we shouldn’t have family reunification, because some people try to exploit it”, but it does mean that officialdom has to try to verify carefully that these are genuine family reunification cases.
Keith Vaz
I thank the Minister for giving way to me a second time. However, that is the problem with the Turkey deal. The deal—the €6 billion that has been given to Turkey—is a reward for Turkey receiving illegal migrants back into Turkey. Actually, the resources should be directed at ensuring that we deal with the people traffickers. We are still not able to get into Libyan waters in order to deal with the boats in the middle of the Mediterranean. Surely the essence should be to stop people being given false hope and to stop people leaving in the first place by helping the countries that are the sources of these difficulties.
Richard Harrington
I agree totally with the right hon. Gentleman. In one of his interventions, he mentioned children in Calais and I will concentrate my remarks on that for the moment. The simple question that he put and that was also put by the shadow Minister is, “Should children be allowed in from Calais where a link can be established?” The answer is, “Obviously, yes.”
The impression given in the media—although not by the speakers today; there is no intention to mislead Parliament—is that we are seeing children in Calais and thinking, “How can we stop them from coming to the UK?” That is not the case. That is why the Government have invested a lot of time and effort working with France. Our officials regularly meet French officials and there are discussions at all levels about how to make this quick. There is now a permanent official contact committee. Since one of our officials was seconded to the French interior ministry, the speed has grown significantly—there is no question about it. The numbers may appear small—
Oral Answers to Questions
Keith Vaz Excerpts(8 years, 6 months ago)
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Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)
May I thank the Prime Minister for joining Leicestershire MPs and the rest of the planet in congratulating Leicester City football club on their brilliant and historic success in the premier league? During this amazing season, local Leicester hero, Gary Lineker, thought the idea of Leicester winning the league was so far-fetched that he said he would present “Match of the Day” in his underwear if they won. Does the Prime Minister, as an Aston Villa supporter—my commiserations to him on their season—agree that, in politics as well as in football, when people make a promise, they should keep it?
The Prime Minister
I absolutely agree. I have been watching everything Gary Lineker has said since, and he is not quite answering the question—something that, of course, no one ever gets away with in this House. I welcome what the right hon. Gentleman has said; obviously, I hope it is just the start of him joining the blue team.
Humanitarian Crisis: Greece
Keith Vaz Excerpts(8 years, 8 months ago)
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Justine Greening
I agree very strongly with my hon. Friend. By pursuing the UK aid strategy of doing the right thing by some of the poorest and most vulnerable people in the world, we also do the right thing by ourselves. Perhaps the worst long-term challenge of the many facing Syria is that many of its best and brightest are leaving the region. The more we can help people to stay close to home and close to their families, the more we prepare for Syria to have the people it needs to help it get back on its feet. As it stands that prospect seems a long way off, but that does not mean we should not try to do our best to achieve it.
Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)
The hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald) and I were told last Thursday by Europol that 90% of the migrants who enter the EU do so because they are supported by organised criminal gangs. When will we get a statement from Ministers to tell us that there is success against the organised criminal gangs that are doing so much damage to the people of Europe? When is Turkey going to get the €3 billion we promised it to help it to deal with this crisis?
Justine Greening
The right hon. Gentleman will see that on the Treasury Bench with me is the Minister for Immigration, my right hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (James Brokenshire), who I am sure will respond to his point on progress in tackling organised criminal gangs. Our National Crime Agency works very closely with Europol. He will be aware that we also played our role in saving lives in the Mediterranean with Royal Navy and Border Force cutters. The €3 billion has now been agreed. In fact, we managed to agree it in time for the London conference, which again was a step forward. The key is making sure that it is delivered and that the strategy behind how it is invested is strong. That needs to involve not just the day-to-day support for refugees whom Turkey is very generously hosting—we should remember that Turkey has taken in 2 million refugees—but getting children back into school and progress on effective border control. The package now in place needs to be very carefully delivered not only by the EU, but by Turkey itself in terms of how it uses that investment.
Oral Answers to Questions
Keith Vaz Excerpts(8 years, 9 months ago)
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Richard Harrington
I thank my hon. Friend and the leader of Redditch Borough Council for the part they have played in the joint bid with Worcestershire County Council. As they are aware, we work closely with local authorities to ensure that capacity is identified as suitable for that area, and I again confirm to my hon. Friend that the funding available through the spending review will go a long way towards funding the resettlement of Syrian refugees.
Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)
I commend the Minister on being the first Home Office Minister in living memory to set a target for resettlement and meet that target. However, there are still another 19,000 Syrian refugees to be resettled before the next election, and the number of other asylum seekers has risen from 9,000 to 17,000. Where are we going to find that accommodation?
Richard Harrington
Mr Speaker, excuse me, but to be complimented by the Chairman of the Select Committee on Home Affairs puts one off one’s stride at the Dispatch Box. I remind the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) that the refugee scheme for which I am responsible very much requires the good nature of local authorities. That, together with the asylum programme, is important to us, and I am pleased to say that the demand for places from refugees equals the supply.
Syria Crisis: UK Response
Keith Vaz Excerpts(8 years, 9 months ago)
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Justine Greening
The sort of step forward that we saw last Thursday—the commitment that no child will be lost to the Syrian crisis, and that all children will be back in school—is absolutely critical. If we want them ever to feel that they are in a position to rebuild their own country, they will need at least to be able to read and write, and to have had some sort of education. Too many children have already lost too many days in school, but after last Thursday we have a much better chance of getting them back into the classroom and back learning. That is precisely what we are hoping to do over the next few weeks and months.
Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)
May I join other Members in commending the Secretary of State for the success of the donor conference but remind her that, as with the Yemen donor conference six years ago, it is not the pledges but the paying of the money that matters? In that case, only 10% has been paid so far. The key local country is Turkey, to which the EU has pledged €3 billion to deal with this crisis. Has that money been paid at least in part, and can she reassure the House that recent developments are not affecting the processing of the 19,000 Syrian refugees whom the Prime Minister has pledged will come to this county before the next election?
Justine Greening
The €3 billion deal was very much reached as part of the Syria conference last Thursday. Like the right hon. Gentleman, I will be very keen to make sure that all the commitments made last Thursday are delivered. That is vital if we are to achieve the results we have set ourselves, including the ambition to make sure that no Syrian refugee child is out of school by the end of the forthcoming academic year. More broadly, he should be reassured that the UK will continue to play a role in ensuring not only that we do a lot in our response to this crisis—we have already done so: we are the second biggest bilateral donor to date—but that we continue to shape the response.
Syrian Refugees: Resettlement
Keith Vaz Excerpts(8 years, 10 months ago)
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Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray, and a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Faversham and Mid Kent (Helen Whately). She made an excellent speech, and I can happily say that I agree with everything she said. She has brought this important and serious topic to the House not only because we should be proud of what Britain has done but also because there are problems ahead that we need to address. The people of Kent and her local council need to be congratulated on what they have done.
I want to do something pretty rare: get up and congratulate a Home Office Minister on his performance. This could be the end of his career, but I want to commend the Under-Secretary of State for Refugees, the hon. Member for Watford (Richard Harrington), for the work he has done in this area and for overseeing the one immigration target that the Government have actually managed to reach—certainly in the eight years that I have been Chairman of the Select Committee on Home Affairs. That target was the Prime Minister’s pledge, made in a full and open way, to ensure we have 1,000 Syrian refugees resettled in Britain by Christmas. The Minister did it, and he should be commended for doing so. Because of that success, our Committee will be pressing him even harder to ensure he delivers on the rest of the Prime Minister’s pledge.
We need to be conscious that this is not a crisis on its own. It is part of the most difficult crisis the European Union faces: the migration crisis. It is not going to get easier; it is going to get much worse. As we saw at the meeting in Brussels yesterday of EU Home Affairs Ministers, the crisis is dividing Europe and showing the fault lines that exist. There is a challenge to ensure that the overall refugee crisis and the migration crisis affecting the EU are seen in a much wider context than just what is happening in Syria.
All European countries need to be commended for the way in which they have singled out those from Syria in need of a fast-track service, which at the moment is being provided by the United Kingdom but not necessarily by other EU countries. When the Minister responds, I hope he will tell us more about what is happening on the deal made with Turkey. The European Union has pledged €3 billion to Turkey in order to ask it to provide better and greater assistance to those who have landed within its area.
Of course we need to do what we promised to do and take in the numbers that the Prime Minister mentioned. However, we also need to ensure that good allies such as Turkey and good members of the EU such as Greece are doing their bit to ensure that when Syrian refugees arrive in the EU, they are treated well. Indeed, if Turkey fulfils the promise it made to the leaders of the EU, it will be able to take EU funds and provide the kind of assistance that a number of hon. Members have said it should provide. The Minister will be aware that the way to solve the Syrian crisis is through the political situation in Syria. Unless we deal with that, and unless we have a stable Government in Syria, we will not see an end to a crisis that is clearly engulfing the European Union.
I have just three further points to make within your informal time limit, Mr Gray. The first is about the big and open offer made by a number of residents of the United Kingdom—including, I should say, my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) and the Archbishop of Canterbury—to provide assistance and shelter for Syrian refugees who are coming over. The hon. Member for Faversham and Mid Kent said that Mr Geldof—or Sir Bob, as he is now known—has offered sanctuary to some Syrian refugees. I cannot quite understand why the Government still have not acted on such offers from the British people.
In the Minister’s eloquent evidence to my Select Committee, he said that the Archbishop of Canterbury should, in effect, contact Lambeth Council if he had an offer of support. I can just imagine the archbishop on the phone to Lambeth Council, waiting to go through its automated system, finally getting through to some caseworker in the housing department and saying, “This is the Archbishop of Canterbury on the phone. The Minister for Syrian refugees has suggested I should ring and offer some of the rooms I have at Lambeth Palace. Could you tell me what to do?” I imagine the phone would probably be put down or the call transferred to another section of Lambeth Council—maybe the health department. We need something more concrete. Big offers have been made by the British people. Let us take those up.
The hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes) and I were present at the Home Affairs Committee’s session yesterday when we heard from G4S, one of the Government’s providers of asylum accommodation, which I know is different from what is provided for Syrian refugees. G4S said that the number of asylum seekers in this country for whom it has to find accommodation has gone up from 9,000 to 17,000 in the space of just three years.
The pressure on council housing, and indeed the private rented sector, is now enormous. It will be extremely difficult to find available housing for those who are coming over. We need to be very serious about the issue of housing, because we do not want Syrian refugees to be placed in the same position as some asylum seekers in Middlesbrough were. Our Select Committee looked at that very subject yesterday, because we have enormous concerns about how asylum seekers were being housed there.
My final point relates to regular information. In the Minister’s celebrated appearance before our Committee, I asked him—he keeps reminding me of this—seven times to tell us how many Syrian refugees had arrived. He batted the question away like a great cricketer at the crease, faced by a number of fast-coming balls. He said he was not prepared to give a running commentary on the numbers who had come in and that we had to wait for the statistics that are published on a quarterly basis. He told everyone that except, of course, the Prime Minister, who decided not to wait till the publication of the quarterly statistics, but to tell the House of Commons first, in the last questions session before Christmas, to give us all a warm glow and a feeling of happiness that the Minister had reached his target. We think we should have regular information, and not just about the numbers who come in. We do not need to wait for the quarterly statistics, and we need to include information about inclusion, as the hon. Member for Faversham and Mid Kent said.
When the Ugandan Asians came to Leicester and enriched that city and places such as Watford, where the Minister comes from, and other constituencies represented by Members here, we were able to include them in the mainstream of our country’s activities. Some of the Syrian refugees will want to go back to Syria when the country is stable and returns to prosperity, there is no doubt about that. Some will want to stay and be part of our country and live here for the rest of their lives. It is important to include the diaspora—there are many people of Syrian origin who have lived in this country for many years—in a formal or informal resettlement board, because Whitehall does not know best about these issues.
Thirty years on from when the Ugandan Asians arrived in Leicester, they are now an integral part of this country—indeed, some have even been elected to the House of Commons—and they have shown themselves to be model citizens. Let us use that example of what Britain does best, provide asylum to those who need asylum and include those people in the mainstream of our public life.
Richard Harrington
I am sorry, but I really do not have time, because we have only got five minutes and I have got loads of things to say. Participation in the resettlement scheme is voluntary for local authorities. I would like to cover the finance point, because one of the very good contributions from the Scottish Members had a slight mistake in it. It is not just year 1 funding that has been arranged; there is a full programme for years 2 to 5. I am happy to go into detail in writing or to talk to hon. Members about it. Suffice it to say, within the time available, that most local authority leaders are quite satisfied with the funding, because years 2 to 5 are provided for.
As far as local authorities are concerned, the Government are conscious of the fact that settlement requires more than housing. That housing is provided predominantly by private landlords and paid for through local authorities, but with Government funds, deliberately so as not to interfere with the housing stock in those areas. In addition, each area is responsible for programmes to welcome people, introduce them to the local community and ensure that they register with doctors, schools and so on. I mention that because one of the faults of previous such programmes was that people were housed but forgotten about, and we are determined that that will not happen. Those are valid points to raise.
The Chair of the Home Affairs Committee made many erudite points, one of which was to ask what the Government were going to do about all the offers of spare rooms and shelter. He mentioned the Archbishop of Canterbury, whom I was with this morning—
Richard Harrington
Indeed, and your name was mentioned—not your name, Mr Gray, but the right hon. Gentleman’s. I apologise for not mentioning your name to the Archbishop, Mr Gray; I know that you know him very well.
On a serious point, we cannot take up the kind offers of spare rooms in people’s houses because we are not interested in providing temporary accommodation to refugees. Our programme is intended to settle people where they will live, if not permanently, for the foreseeable future. However, that does not mean that we are not using all those offers of help. I discussed the matter this morning with the Archbishop. He is, by the way, in touch with Lambeth Council, and I am sorry that the right hon. Member for Leicester East has such a low opinion of Labour councils and their housing departments that he thinks that he would not be treated properly.
Putting that to one side for the moment, we are considering lots of other things through community sponsorship so that those kind offers can be used. One example is mentoring people into jobs, which is being trialled in a scheme in Bradford at the moment. Another is twinning families with other families, who can help by taking them to job interviews and English language lessons, which we are encouraging. We are doing lots of community sponsorship things—I would be happy to go into them on another occasion, but I am conscious of the time—so the good will of those people is absolutely not being turned away.
I will leave the right hon. Gentleman’s running commentary points for the moment, because there may be another occasion to discuss that. He said that it was very important that we include the diaspora of Syrians who already live here. I met all the groups during my first few weeks in office and I asked them to form one umbrella organisation, which they have done. I met some of them yesterday, and I will meet more of them tomorrow, to make sure that they are used in all the areas where they have people. A slight problem is that they are concentrated in certain areas and not present in many areas where refugees are going, but they are being very co-operative.
The point about religious minorities is particularly important, because there has been a general belief that our system of taking people from the UNHCR, using the vulnerability criteria, is all well and good, but that some people—particularly Christians, but also other minorities—have been left out. I am determined that that will not happen. There is one rule on which I think the Government have every right to be inflexible, and that is that people have to register with the UNHCR, because it is the only way in which we can work out the vulnerability points, such as health and all the other things that we deal with. However, I have asked the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Catholic Bishop Patrick Lynch, whom I met last week, and every other body that we work with to give us evidence of places where there are pockets of people who are not registered. The Department for International Development is funding the UNHCR to provide outreach staff to register those people. I am pleased to tell my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes) that on meeting a Catholic bishop who came back from Jordan last week, I was told for the first time that there are green shoots, with more evidence of Christians registering. I want to make it clear that the Government have no policy of discriminating against Christians or anybody else, because what we are interested in is vulnerability.
As far as the contributions from Scottish Members are concerned—I am sorry to group them together, but there is not time to go through their individual contributions—I pay tribute to the way in which the Scottish Government, the Scottish local authorities and the Home Office have worked together. It is a very good model for democracy, because no one cares about who is in which party or about trying to score points off each other, and the end product has been extremely good. I cannot stress that enough, and I can say that because I have experienced it myself.
This is a very complex issue. A lot of people have mentioned the 3,000 children, and have said that 20,000 refugees is not enough. It is certainly true that hundreds of thousands could be picked out. I would like to stress two points in my remaining time. First, hon. and right hon. Members must remember that the 20,000 is a small part of our overall humanitarian policy. Most of our work is in the countries adjoining Syria, such as Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey, and I think that this country can be proud of that work. One Member mentioned Germany. Germany has a lot of migrants, but compared with Germany, we do a lot of work on the ground on matters such as accommodation and health. It works both ways. There has been a lot of talk about the children, and all I can say in the few seconds I have left is that the Prime Minister is considering the situation, and I believe we can expect an announcement shortly. I am sorry that I cannot give any more information than that, but the points have been very well made.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered the resettlement of Syrian refugees.
Oral Answers to Questions
Keith Vaz Excerpts(8 years, 11 months ago)
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Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)
I welcome all the efforts that have been made by the Government, including the ceasefire, but the real problem is getting aid into Yemen. What can we do to raise the blockade?
Mr Swayne
We have invested £1.7 million in the UN vessel investigation mechanism. I hope that that will have a quantum effect on the number of vessels that are able to dock in the ports—60 last month, 55 the month before. It is getting better, but we are far, far short of what is necessary.