Oral Answers to Questions

Mark Lazarowicz Excerpts

Tuesday 30th October 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mark Simmonds)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising that important matter and can assure him that we are monitoring events carefully. For the edification of the House, the elections in Sierra Leone are on 17 November. All parties have completed their nomination procedures, political supporters have been active, there has been no serious trouble so far, thankfully, and the electoral institutions are making progress, but I acknowledge that there is more to do. The Department for International Development has a programme for the electoral cycle, from 2010 to 2014, and the high commission is engaged with the political leaders and, on election day, will provide a team of observers to ensure that the elections are free and fair.

[Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op)]

T2. In the earlier discussion on Syria we did not talk about the refugees, but of course hundreds of thousands of people, both internally and in neighbouring countries, are now homeless and face a desperate situation. What are we and the international community doing to assist them?

[Mr Hague]

The hon. Gentleman is quite right to draw attention to that. There are now up to 350,000 refugees in neighbouring countries, about 1.2 million people are thought to be internally displaced in Syria and about 2.5 million need humanitarian assistance. It is a rapidly escalating humanitarian crisis that will only get worse in the coming months. The United Kingdom is the second largest bilateral donor to the relief effort. We have so far given £39.5 million and consideration is being given to what further assistance we can give. We are also helping directly as well as through UN agencies, particularly in Jordan, so we are doing everything we can to alleviate the suffering in the crisis.