Libya

Laurence Robertson Excerpts

Tuesday 19th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

I think that there is a misunderstanding about what the militia are. After 2011, Libya fragmented. Every city, every town and every region had its armed forces—armed men who were protecting their communities. That does not make them bad people. They are not extreme Islamists in most cases; they are simply people who have formed home defence units, and they are the only force on the ground. It is not possible to talk about raising new Libyan armed forces that will then take on all the militias—that would be a completely unrealistic project. The only way forward is to co-opt militias into a nascent Libyan armed forces, backed by a political system that is highly devolved and that assures them of autonomy and fair shares of Libya’s wealth for the communities they seek to back.

[Mr Laurence Robertson (Tewkesbury) (Con)]

Further to the point raised by the hon. Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley) about Libyan-sponsored IRA murder, not only in Northern Ireland but in England, including in this city, while I understand the Foreign Secretary’s comments about timing, given that there is an emerging Government in Libya and that we will at some point be releasing between £7 billion and £8 billion of frozen assets from this country alone, will he and his ministerial team continue to do all they can to get compensation for people and their relatives who have suffered for far too long?

[Mr Hammond]

Yes, the assurance that I gave to the hon. Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley) extends, of course, to the WPC Yvonne Fletcher case.