Middle East and North Africa

Lord Desai Excerpts

Wednesday 16th September 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Desai (Lab)]

My Lords, let me first pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Brooke. Knowing him has been one of the great pleasures of my life here and I shall always cherish his friendship and his wit.

Let me try a completely different and somewhat utopian solution to the problem at hand. As the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, said at the beginning, this problem has been going on for a long time. The war in the Middle East has been going on since, I think, 1973, but if not, at least since the beginning of this century. It will go on, it is not going to end. We are witnessing the consequences of the breakdown of the Ottoman Empire 100 years down the line, and they are not going to go away.

I think that the European Union can solve the problem, but it cannot necessarily accommodate all the people who are going to come. Indeed, it is a travesty for the European Union to believe that it has done anything to solve the problem. It is Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey who have housed more refugees than Europe has done or will ever do.

My solution is the following—it is very utopian, I agree. The European Union should go to the United Nations and propose a global solution to the refugee problem. There are sparsely populated countries in central Asia: Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Mongolia and so on. Their population density is one-hundredth of the population density in Europe. I would like the United Nations to arrange a transfer of as many migrants and refugees as possible, with the co-operation of those countries, to settle them in those countries. The European Union should provide financial support and encouragement for that.

As the noble Baroness said, the UK’s contribution to humanitarian aid has been fantastic, whatever people may say about our ability or willingness to have people come here. Europe’s strength is in resources—money—and diplomatic clout. Europe should go to the United Nations and propose that global solution with the co-operation of the receiving countries. We can then transfer a lot of people from Lebanon, Jordan or wherever to those countries. They are Muslim countries. These are co-religionists of the people leaving Syria and Iraq.

Everybody will tell me that that is not possible, but what is the House of Lords for if not to propose utopian solutions? That is my solution, and I hope that someone takes it up. If anyone wants more information, I can give it to them, but if I stop here, I will contribute three minutes to the debate this evening, and that is more valuable than anything I have said.