Syria: Idlib Attacks

Lord Collins of Highbury Excerpts

Tuesday 18th June 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for repeating the response to the Urgent Question in the other place. I agree that the NGOs and DfID’s partners are doing a terrific job under incredibly difficult circumstances. However, as she has said, there is clear evidence of breaches of international humanitarian law. What are the Government doing to ensure that this does not continue with impunity? What are we doing to support efforts not only in the peace talks, which are really important, but to ensure that proper evidence is gathered so that we can hold the people responsible fully to account?

[Baroness Sugg]

I join with the noble Lord in paying tribute to the people who are working on the ground in such a difficult situation, and he is quite right to say that it is important that we find out who is responsible and hold them to account. At the moment, we do not have clear evidence, but at least some of the attacks have obviously been organised by people with access to sophisticated weapons, including a modern air force, and we are investing in the investigation into that through organisations such as the International Impartial and Independent Mechanism in order to gather that evidence and hold these people to account.