Syria

Lloyd Russell-Moyle Excerpts

Monday 16th April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Alison McGovern]

I will give way in a moment, but I will come back to others first.

In addition, surveillance and reconnaissance assets can conduct monitoring and reporting of attacks against civilians. The UK and its coalition partners should be providing protection and support to the UN. It is within the coalition’s gift to establish a favourable air situation so that we can ensure the safe delivery of humanitarian aid. We have to get the right supplies in, and I simply ask the Government to go back and find what more they can do to open humanitarian corridors and get aid in.

As a guarantor of the rules-based international order, the Government must now ask all parties to the conflict to permit the unrestricted delivery and distribution of that aid. This has to be put in as simple and stark terms as possible. We have to articulate what we see as the next stage for accountability and whether there is a role for other routes through the UN and the International Criminal Court. The Government ought to say what they think now. The French Government recently made a number of suggestions, and I ask the Government to look at those and work with the French to see what can be done.

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[Alison McGovern]

I have a very firm view, which is that that is a question for Syrians to decide. In this country, the United Kingdom, we are a democracy, and we decide who we are led by. I believe that that should be the same for every country in the world, especially for Syria. It will be for Syrians to decide their leadership, not a British politician in the British Parliament.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

I appreciate that my hon. Friend is making a very important speech. While we may be on different sides of the argument on bombing—[Hon. Members: “Oh!”] Wait a second, because I want to say something positive—[Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I say very gently to the hon. Gentleman, blurt it out briefly, man.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

I spent the first week of the recess in northern Syria—I left the day before the attacks happened—and I met the Kurdish leaders. My hon. Friend mentioned the involvement of women. Does she recognise that the role of the Kurdish people in involving women is really important and that any discussions must include the Kurds in northern Syria?

[Alison McGovern]

That is extremely helpful. I would just say to all Members that if they think they can do politics without women, well, they are wrong.

As I say, we have the potential to show British leadership in bringing people together for a longer-term vision of the peace. It will not be easy, but work invested in this now would bear fruit in the future.

On demonstrating our British commitment to the victims of war, I must ask the Prime Minister to turn her attention to the refugees. I am pretty sure she is not going to agree with me. The Government previously committed to taking 20,000 Syrian refugees by 2020, but I am afraid that, to me, that is not good enough. It is just 4% of the number taken in by Germany. When it comes to the figure of 3,000 children taken in under the Dubs amendment—they are not all Syrian, but some are—I just think that that is not nearly good enough, given the size and scale of this conflict. We have to demonstrate good faith, which means putting our arms out and offering a chance of life—not just to be alive, but to truly exist—to people who are some of the most unfortunate in our world. Surely, it is in our British nature to do that. Our reputation is really being diminished on the world stage, and the issue of refugees has rubbished our global reputation.

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[Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)]

I do not want to rehash the points made by other hon. Members, but generally I support the tone of the debate. I totally agree with many colleagues who have said that we must have a joined-up and co-ordinated strategy for how we support the people of Syria in diplomatic, humanitarian and other ways.

On the diplomatic strategy, resolution 377A of the General Assembly—the “Uniting for Peace” resolution—would allow this Government to convene an emergency session of the GA to seek a majority there. If that majority was found, it would provide a level of backing under international law that would give some legitimacy to further actions and strategies on Syria.

I want to focus most of my comments on my trip to northern Syria a week ago. I met a number of the Kurdish but also the Arab and Turkmen leaders who hold joint positions in the northern Syrian region administration. Often we talk about the disaster of Syria, but what the northern Syrian authority has managed to achieve despite all the disaster going on around it is rather remarkable, and we should be basing our strategy for Syria on that. It has achieved a bottom-up democracy in which local organisations co-ordinate at the parish level to ensure basic humanitarian provision, in which women must co-chair every single level of government—that is remarkable for the region and for the world—and in which there is a quota to ensure that 40% of seats in all authorities in the northern Syrian region are reserved for non-Kurdish minorities, which shows the pluralism that these people are trying to build. It also has a fighting force that led in fighting Daesh and its fascist ideology all the way back to the borders.

What I heard there was a feeling that these people are now being let down by the British Government. With the incursion into Afrin by Turkey, a supposed British ally, they feel that they have been left out in the cold. I spoke to the co-Prime Minister there, who said that Russia and Syria had made them an offer: if they got into bed with them, they would give them protection against Turkey. They rejected that offer; they could not get into bed with Assad because they wanted democracy.

We must ensure that we uphold the work that those people have done, rather than abandoning them to the onslaught. Hundreds of thousands of people have now been displaced in Afrin and hundreds have died. There is one thing that the Government could do. A number of military fighters in the region who have fought Daesh are ill and need advanced medical treatment, but the Government are refusing them visas through the new corridor that has opened up into Iraq—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I am sorry, but we are time-constrained.