Britain’s Place in the World

Liz Saville Roberts Excerpts

Tuesday 15th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Alok Sharma]

My hon. Friend makes an important point, and as he will have seen in the Queen’s Speech and indeed the speech the Prime Minister made yesterday, environmental issues are very much at the top of the Government’s agenda.

Talking about the opportunities we have, in January our country will host Governments from across Africa here in London for the UK-Africa investment summit. The summit will bring together businesses, Governments and international institutions to encourage investment in Africa. This will also create opportunities for the City of London.

[Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)]

To state the obvious, Britain leaving the EU will decrease our influence in the world, not increase it. Seven of the countries with a seat at the table in Brussels this week have a population that is smaller than that of Wales, yet they will have greater influence over the future of Europe than the UK might have. Does the Minister not agree that Wales therefore will be better placed in the world with our own seat at the table, rather than in this Union of unequals?

[Alok Sharma]

First, may I just say that we are determined to respect the outcome of the referendum? Indeed, colleagues across the House, including some who now argue against it, at the time said this was a once-in-a-generation vote. Well, let’s get together; let’s respect the outcome of the referendum. And I have to say to the right hon. Lady that I wish she was a bit more positive about our future as a country. I have outlined the fact that we lead the world in very many institutions; that will absolutely continue, and I hope that she will find that she is able to be a little bit more positive about our future.

The right hon. Lady may recall that in the aftermath of the vote to leave many people said that the economy would turn down and we would lose jobs. That is not what has happened: the economy has stayed strong; employment is at record levels.

In DFID, our ultimate goal in tackling poverty is to support countries to help themselves and meet the sustainable development goals, to become economically self-sustaining and our trading partners of the future. I want developing countries to trade their way out of needing aid.

Of course the shadow Chancellor sees business as the enemy; that is his stated position. We do not; we see it as an enabler. The private sector has had the biggest impact in tackling poverty in the developing world in the last 100 years, and this Government, as my hon. Friend the Member for Henley (John Howell) said, are relentlessly pursuing free trade agreements; these will benefit businesses and consumers in Britain and in the developing world.

Governments around the world collectively spend around $140 billion every year on aid. However, the United Nations estimates that an additional $2.5 trillion is required annually in developing countries to meet the sustainable development goals. That investment gap needs to be met largely by the private sector. That is why I have established an International Development Infrastructure Commission to advise on how we can mobilise additional private sector funds.

But global Britain is about more than Brexit or free trade; it is also about the role we have to play in tackling some of the biggest issues facing our world.

UNHCR: Admission Pathways for Syrian Refugees

Liz Saville Roberts Excerpts

Wednesday 16th March 2016 Westminster Hall

[Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)]

Diolch yn fawr iawn Mr Cadeirydd; it is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Crausby. I thank the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) for securing this timely debate, given, of course, that the meeting she referred to is due to be held at the end of this month. I will speak briefly, because a number of people want to contribute to the debate.

As I am sure everyone in the Chamber would agree, the increasing number of refugees and migrants requires a global and high-level response. This is the most serious challenge of our time—it is a moral, practical and political challenge. It is deceptively simple in debate but it is immense in its implications for those millions of people who have been cast adrift.

First, I will mark my respect for Cefnogi Ffoaduriaid Meirionnydd Dwyfor, or Refugee Solidarity, which has urged me to draw attention to the situation whereby refugees with family members in the UK—that is, people who would be accepted on this side of the channel—are in no way enabled to travel from Calais. The hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion described many such incidents, which is the reality of many migrants’ experience. As I say, these are people who would be accepted if they were to arrive in these islands.

There is a grim irony in people having to take such risks to arrive in a country where asylum will be granted to them, but only if they run a dangerous gauntlet before arrival. The channel may be a convenient barrier, but it cannot be acceptable to condone quietly the risks associated with an illegitimate sea crossing by boat, container or tunnel as a matter of policy. We are fortunate to be an island, but that does not absolve us of moral responsibilities.

Secondly, I take this opportunity to draw attention to the ongoing plight of the Yazidi community in Syria. The world noticed them—briefly—two years ago, when Daesh attacked the region and city of Shingal. Over 60,000 Yazidis were stranded in a state of siege on the mountains as they attempted to flee. They had been given the option by Daesh of converting to Islam or the men would be killed and the women sold as chattel—as sex slaves. The Yazidis’ status as a minority is particularly vulnerable as they are not Muslims and in Daesh’s world view it is not considered rape to force Yazidi women to have sex.

In total, 35 mass graves have been identified in the Shingal region. It is believed that 3,100 Yazidis, mostly women and children, were kidnapped by Daesh in 2014. Some of those women will not return because they have been sold on again, sometimes to Saudi Arabia, or have borne children with Daesh fathers, but it is estimated that 2,000 could be rescued relatively easily by means of being “bought back”. I understand that the average cost of buying a woman her freedom is around $7,000.

Yazidi survivors such as Salwa Khalaf Rasho have recently travelled to London to tell their stories. Many of them have come from Germany, where the state of Baden-Württemberg is providing a two-year programme of therapy for the survivors of Daesh kidnapping and abuse. The community is seeking international support for redress to the atrocity—it verges on genocide— that they suffered in August 2014 and in the years since. Yazidi leaders and supporters have come to Britain with a list of 11 recommendations, which warrant an international response.

I understand that the 2012 recommendations by the United Nations High Commissioner included the need to do more to protect refugee and migrant women, and that members of the Council of Europe should sign and adopt its convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence. I further note that the convention has been signed but not ratified by the UK.

Of course, I support the calls that the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion has made to the Government and I take this opportunity to request that the Under-Secretary of State for Refugees agrees to meet Salwa Khalaf Rasho to hear her story. Individual voices, particularly women’s voices, are drowned out in the cacophony of war. I urge him to play a part by at least listening to her experience.

Refugees: UK Government Policy

Liz Saville Roberts Excerpts

Wednesday 10th February 2016 Westminster Hall

[Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)]

Diolch yn fawr, Mrs Main. I will do my best to keep to the time limit. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Dumfries and Galloway (Richard Arkless) for securing the debate.

It is safe to say that the geopolitics of human suffering that is bringing tide upon tide of desperate refugees to Europe is the greatest ethical and moral challenge of our time. Plaid Cymru has constantly and consistently called on the UK Government to recognise the enormity of the crisis and to respond appropriately. We have also joined charities such as Oxfam and the Welsh Refugee Council in urging that the nations of the United Kingdom take our fair share of refugees. However, the number of people reaching Wales remains small. It is a distressing fact that more people lost their lives in the Mediterranean last year than found refuge in Wales.

Wales has a proud history of offering sanctuary to refugees, but we need to do more, and doing more means that there is a complex jigsaw of authorities, responsibilities and budgets to negotiate, against a background of austerity. The UK Government, the Welsh Government, Welsh local authorities and Welsh charities need to pull together to ensure that refugees are welcomed in Wales, that they have the means to settle and thrive and that their host communities are sufficiently resourced. There are concerns that the funding allocated to individuals for health services may not be sufficient in specific cases. I have spoken to my own local authority, Cyngor Gwynedd, about that.

Both the Home Office and a given local authority might feel that individuals with certain health conditions—perhaps disabled people—should warrant humanitarian priority. I ask the Minister to consider special categories of health needs and to ensure that local authorities can afford to provide proper care. Councils and communities should not be placed in a situation of picking and choosing who to accept from the camps not on the grounds of need but on the grounds of affordability. It is to be feared that the result of that, as matters stand, will be leaving sick and disabled people in the camps, which must be the least suitable place imaginable.

With specific reference to Wales, I would also like to address concerns about asylum accommodation. The recent exposure of systematic failings by Clearsprings in Cardiff warrants an urgent inquiry. It is clear, following yesterday’s evidence session of the Select Committee on Home Affairs, that Clearpsrings was aware of the practice of using red wristbands and decided not to challenge that practice. I propose that that indicates an unjustifiable level of insensitivity to refugees’ experience that calls for an inquiry.

I would like to take this opportunity also to raise the plight of ethnic groups suffering at the hands of Daesh in countries beyond the boundaries of Syria. The media news cycle is fickle. What pulls at our heartstrings one week is next week’s recycling fodder. Two years ago, the fate of the Yazidi community was headline news when Daesh besieged thousands of Yazidis on Mount Sinjar in Iraq between August and December 2014. Daesh’s cynical demand of “Convert or die” amounted to nothing less than a veil to conceal genocide. Members of the Yazidi diaspora talk about 35 mass graves containing 6,000 dead. The Yazidis are a community of 500,000 people who have suffered extreme religious persecution. They have been displaced from their homelands in Sinjar, the Nineveh plain and Syria, where they have lived for 3,000 years. The Yazidis, as I am sure many people are aware, are not a Muslim people, and they have been treated with particular harshness because of that.

Yazidi women have been, and remain, the victims of systematic sexual violence at the hands of Daesh fighters. They are especially vulnerable to enslavement and forced sexual abuse because of their ethnicity and religion. This week, I had the honour of meeting a young Yazidi woman, Nadia Murad, and learning something about her experiences. I was horrified to learn that some 3,400 Yazidi women and girls—children among them—are still held captive by Daesh.

My request is that the degree of our concern is not dictated by the latest media story, and that the quality of people’s suffering is not defined by the immediate horror of today’s news bulletin. Along with many hon. Members, I urge the Government to take our fair share of refugees from Syria and beyond, and to ensure that we provide proper care for them here in the UK. I beg the Government to remember the other ethnic groups caught up in the maelstrom, in the name of religion, in the middle east.