Syria Crisis: UK Response

Mark Field Excerpts

Monday 8th February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

Mr Speaker, I shall try to answer briefly the points that the hon. Gentleman raised, which were all important.

As I said, we will do our level best to make sure that the commitments made last Thursday are honoured. The hon. Gentleman is right to highlight the important role of civil society. In fact, we had a day dedicated to that last Wednesday. Seventeen Syrian civil society organisations were represented at that event, and 27 non-governmental organisations overall. The role they have been playing, and can continue to play, is in delivery on the ground. Many of these people put their lives on the line every single day of the week to get into communities who desperately need their help. We have to continue to assess needs, and the information that we get from civil society is often vital in making sure that we target our aid where it can have the biggest impact,.

Looking ahead, perhaps optimistically, but nevertheless importantly, when we finally get to a position where we can see Syria getting back on its feet and rebuilt, civil society will have a crucial role not only in understanding the needs and priorities of local people but in forming networks that can help on the ground to deliver on them. As I said, I believe that we are playing our role, not only, overwhelmingly of course, in the region, but closer to home here in the EU. A pound spent here in Europe does not go anywhere near as far in supporting refugees as a pound that can be delivered closer to home in the region to provide food, water and shelter, or get a child into school who is currently out of school. It is incredibly important that we do not lose sight of the need to tackle the root causes that underlie the refugee flows into Europe over recent months.

The hon. Gentleman will not be surprised to hear that I could not disagree with him more on UK airstrikes. One of the key challenges in ever reaching any kind of peaceful settlement in Syria is the presence of the barbaric Daesh, who, day by day, routinely commit acts of unspeakable brutality—particularly on women, but on people more generally—in the territories they control. These people are not simply going to get up and go home. That is why we need to take military action against them to force them out of those territories. This is already happening in Iraq. They are leaving a wasteland behind them, but at least it is a wasteland that we can start to rebuild in, and we are going to do the same in Syria.

[Mark Field (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)]

I wholeheartedly support what the Government are doing. A critical part of our strategy is to ensure that the two small nations nearby, Jordan and Lebanon, are able to cope. It must be incredibly difficult, given the huge number of refugees compared with their overall populations. Will the Secretary of State give some detail on the work we are doing to encourage those two nations, particularly in economic terms, through customs unions and the idea of economic co-operation—perhaps not just with the UK but within the EU as a whole—to try to ensure that they do their best in this regard? We must recognise that many hundreds of thousands of these Syrian refugees are likely to be in Jordan and Lebanon for many years to come.