Daesh: Syria/Iraq

Debate between Lord Hammond of Runnymede and Stephen Twigg

Wednesday 16th December 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

The Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood), was in Kurdistan yesterday and he reports that our action has boosted morale among Kurdish forces, as we would expect. In particular, what has been happening around Sinjar has considerably boosted morale and the strategic position of Kurdish forces. They are extremely delighted—there is no other word for it—about the decision this House made two weeks ago.

[Stephen Twigg (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab/Co-op)]

In his statement, the Secretary of State said, “The majority of Russian air strikes continue to target Syrian opposition forces rather than Daesh.” Is it not clear that Russia’s priority is to protect the Assad regime? Does it remain the position of the British Government that Assad cannot be part of any solution to the Syrian crisis?

[Mr Hammond]

I long since gave up using the word “clear” to describe anything about Russian policy, because it is anything but clear—it is always opaque. We simply do not know what the Russian strategy is. We do not know what Russia’s objectives are, and my assessment is that most people in the Russian system do not either; perhaps Mr Putin has in his head an idea about what the end game is. What I do know is that some 75% of Russian airstrikes are being conducted against people whom we believe have to be part of the solution to the Syrian problem, not against Daesh, which we are very clear is the enemy.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Hammond of Runnymede and Stephen Twigg

Tuesday 20th October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

Again, I agree. Being outside the Schengen area has allowed us to stand back from the immediate pressure of this migration crisis and take a slightly more detached view, where we have focused on helping in the upstream areas with very generous humanitarian support to the Syrian region. It is not only being outside the Schengen area; it is having the justice and home affairs opt-out that allows us to say very clearly that we will not share in any compulsory reallocation of migrants within the EU.

[Stephen Twigg (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab/Co-op)]

How will the Government ensure that the 20,000 refugees they have agreed to take from the region include some of the most vulnerable—children, disabled people, women who may have faced sexual violence—and how many of those refugees does the right hon. Gentleman expect to be here by Christmas?

[Mr Hammond]

The hon. Gentleman makes an excellent point. This is exactly the Prime Minister’s point: many of the people we see on our television screens walking down railway lines are fit young men coming to Europe to look for work—and that’s fine—but there are also many extraordinarily vulnerable individuals in displaced persons camps who are simply not able to try to make that difficult and dangerous crossing into Europe, and we will take those people, asking the UN to prioritise the most vulnerable.