Oral Answers to Questions

Mary Creagh Excerpts

Wednesday 18th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)]

4. What steps the Government are taking to increase long-term support for Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh.

[Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)]

5. What steps her Department is taking to help Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh.

[The Secretary of State for International Development (Priti Patel)]

The UK is the largest bilateral donor to the Rohingya refugee crisis in Bangladesh. DFID has worked in Cox’s Bazar for many, many years, and it has recently stepped up efforts with an additional £30 million in the light of the refugee crisis. We are working with many partners, and I am sure all colleagues in the House, including those who spoke in yesterday’s debate, recognise the difficulties we face in providing aid because of the scale of the refugee crisis. Britain is leading, and we are working with our international aid partners.

[Priti Patel]

The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. I have already called for violence to stop and, importantly, for aid access to be granted. The point about the UN efforts is that we have to have a co-ordinated approach and response to the aid effort, aid delivery and aid access. It is also important that we ensure our voices are heard by the Burmese military, so that they stop the violence and introduce protections for the Rohingya people, rather than the persecution we have seen so far.

[Mary Creagh]

Although the majority of Rohingya Muslims have sought sanctuary in Bangladesh, 40,000 refugees in India face deportation back to Burma. Has the Secretary of State raised that with her Indian counterparts? If not, will she now guarantee that she will do so?

[Priti Patel]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right about the plight of the Rohingya people inside India, which shows the level of dispersal and displacement. With my Foreign Office counterparts—the two Departments are obviously working together—I will pick this up with the Indian Government. Importantly, our focus right now is on the relief efforts in the light of the humanitarian catastrophe in Bangladesh.

G20

Mary Creagh Excerpts

Monday 10th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)]

We know that US intelligence services leaked sensitive UK intelligence in the hours following the attack on the Ariana Grande concert in Manchester. This weekend, according to a tweet from President Trump, he and President Putin were discussing forming

“an impenetrable Cyber Security unit so that election hacking…will be guarded and safe”.

Can the Prime Minister guarantee that UK intelligence assets on cyber-warfare will not be compromised, or shared in any way as long as there is a risk of this sort of bizarre and dangerous alliance with the Russians?

[The Prime Minister]

We take the issue of intelligence sharing very seriously. It is important that we are able to share intelligence with our allies in the United States and with other allies around the world, but what matters is that we are able to do that on the basis of confidence that that intelligence will be treated appropriately. I can assure the hon. Lady that we take the whole issue of cyber-security extremely seriously. That is why we have set up the new National Cyber Security Centre. We recognise and understand the threat that Russia poses in that area.

European Council

Mary Creagh Excerpts

Monday 24th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

As my hon. Friend knows, we want the ability to return to talks that can lead to a proper political transition in Syria. The United Kingdom has played an important role and will continue to play an important role in supporting the opposition. Only two or three weeks ago, my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary hosted Syria opposition parties here in London, where they set out their future aims and vision for Syria. It was important for us to support them then and we will continue to do so.

[Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)]

The Prime Minister said that she wanted the UK to be the most passionate, consistent and committed advocate of free trade anywhere in the world. Would that not be best demonstrated by the UK remaining a member of the single European market of £9 trillion, protecting the jobs and incomes of my constituents? Does she also agree that following the same process as Canada—seven years to negotiate a trade deal only to see it fall at the eleventh hour because it was rejected by one of Belgium’s seven Parliaments—is not something that we should aspire to?

[The Prime Minister]

I understand that although the discussions on the Canadian deal have stalled, attempts are still being made to ensure that that deal can go ahead, and we would encourage it to go ahead. On the wider point the hon. Lady makes, I am sorry but I am going to repeat what I have said previously: people put this purely in terms of some variation of access to or membership of the single market, but what matters is what the trading relationship is. If we make ourselves hidebound, saying that it has to be in this particular form at this stage, it will not be open to us to negotiate the best possible deal. What matters is that we have the maximum possible ability to trade with and operate within the single European market, and to do that across both goods and services. That is what we are aiming for.

EU Council

Mary Creagh Excerpts

Wednesday 29th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The vote in Northern Ireland was very strong, not least in respect of the fact that the party of the First Minister wanted to leave the European Union. It was a very strong statement. I would argue that all the constituent parts of the United Kingdom need to make their voices heard. The process over the next few months of drawing up the different blueprints is an important opportunity to influence the debate in this country and in Europe about what the outcome should be. The example that the hon. Lady gives of cross-border trade in Northern Ireland is a very good one with which to inform the debate.

[Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)]

British troops are on the Polish-Ukraine border taking part in the largest military exercise since the end of the cold war. The Prime Minister has committed 1,000 British personnel to participate in NATO’s very high readiness force in the event of any Russian aggression, and the ceasefire in Ukraine is on the brink of collapse. May I encourage him to use his final appearance as a NATO Prime Minister on 8 and 9 July at the Warsaw summit to urge all our European colleagues to continue to press sanctions against Putin’s Russia, and not to give in to Russia’s aggression in Ukraine?

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right. We have done a lot to reassure our Polish and Baltic friends and allies; that is why the troops are taking part in this exercise. We are taking a leading role in this NATO conference. We are going to make sure that we provide visible troops. Ours will be stationed in Estonia, and I think that America and other countries are going to be in the other Baltic states so that when people look over these borders, they see not just Estonian troops or Latvian troops, but American troops, British troops or French troops. I think that that is absolutely right.

Tributes to Jo Cox

Mary Creagh Excerpts

Monday 20th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)]

We are here today to remember our beloved Jo Cox—a woman who loved and was loved; a woman who fizzed with life, compassion and commitment to social justice; and a woman who cherished her family, who served her community and whose sole aim was to leave the world a better place than she found it. She did, didn’t she? Following the cross-party group on Syria, the Government agreed to take 3,000 unaccompanied Syrian child refugees. In 13 short months, Jo achieved more than some MPs achieve in 13 years.

Jo had an open mind and an open heart, and the world really needed somebody like her—somebody who never gave up; and somebody who knew that, by the strength of our common endeavour, we achieve more than we can alone.

We send our deepest condolences to her dear family, and thank them for sharing her with us. It was a blessing to have known Jo. Rest in peace, sweet friend.

European Council

Mary Creagh Excerpts

Monday 21st March 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The answer to that is no, because Turkey is not part of the EU. Look, I know that in this debate, which I know is going to get very passionate, people want to raise potential concerns and worries to support their argument, but I have say that when it comes to Turkey being a member of the EU, this is not remotely in prospect. Every country has a veto at every stage. The French have said that they are going to hold a referendum. So in this debate let us talk about the things that are going to happen, not the things that are not going to happen. If we stay in a reformed European Union, we keep our borders, we keep our right to set our own visa policy, we keep our own asylum and immigration policy, and we can stop anyone we want to at our borders. Yes, we do believe in the free movement of people to go and live and work in other European countries, as many people in our own country do, but it is not an unqualified right. That is why, if people come here and they cannot find a job, they do not get unemployment benefit, they get sent home after six months and they do not get access to our welfare system in full for four years. Ironically, if we were to leave the EU and take up a Norway-style position or something like that, we would not have those welfare restrictions. So let us set out what can happen, rather than what is not going to happen.

[Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)]

Lebanon took more refugees in two days last year than the UK has taken in the five years of the Syrian civil war, so when the Prime Minister says it is better to keep refugees in the region, countries there look at us and close their borders, because they have taken 4 million refugees. Will the Prime Minister tell the House what monitoring we are conducting with our European and NATO allies of the ceasefire in Syria? How will violations be reported? What is the timetable for moving towards peace and democratic elections in Syria to allow those refugees to return home?

[The Prime Minister]

There are lots of questions there. On the question about how we monitor the ceasefire, we are involved in the cell in Geneva that looks at that. I cannot paint an entirely rosy picture, but I think that the ceasefire is better than people expected. As a result, the peace talks are under way.

On Lebanon, the hon. Lady is absolutely right: it has taken a huge number of refugees. It is, of course, the neighbouring country, and neighbouring countries are under an obligation to do so, and Lebanon is fulfilling its obligations. We are helping with a massive aid programme, but we are also helping the Lebanese armed forces, who are now hugely capable because of all the work the United Kingdom has done. They are having considerable success in making sure they keep Daesh out of their own country.

UK-EU Renegotiation

Mary Creagh Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd February 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

As I said to my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash), Denmark negotiated the same sort of legal opt-outs—and, 23 years on, they still stand and are legally binding.

[Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)]

On 21 July 2005, two weeks after four suicide bombers had murdered 52 people on London’s transport network, Hussain Osman tried but failed to blow himself up on a Hammersmith and City tube line. He fled to Italy and was speedily extradited to face justice in this country—in a matter of weeks rather than the years that a bilateral extradition process would have taken. Can the Prime Minister reassure me and all hon. Members that nothing he does in the renegotiation process will put the functioning of the European arrest warrant at risk?

[The Prime Minister]

I certainly can give the hon. Lady that reassurance. The House debated this issue. We opted out of much of justice and home affairs but we specifically chose to opt back into the European arrest warrant because it has proved very valuable, not least in the case that the hon. Lady mentions and other cases, in ensuring that terrorist suspects and serious criminals can be returned straight away to Britain. If we stay in a reformed European Union, those arrangements will continue. It is more a question for those who want to leave to say how they will put back in place something as powerful as what we have.

ISIL in Syria

Mary Creagh Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd December 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers), although I disagree with the position he takes. I pay tribute to the hon. and gallant Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom Tugendhat), my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis) and the hon. and gallant Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Johnny Mercer) for their thoughtful speeches, and also to my right hon. Friends the Members for Wolverhampton South East (Mr McFadden), for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Alan Johnson) and for Derby South (Margaret Beckett), with whom I agree entirely.

This is one of the most important decisions an MP can make, and it is not one I have taken lightly. As a Labour MP, I believe we have to choose and shape Britain’s place in the world if we are to create a world in which power, wealth and opportunity are in the hands of the many, not the few. ISIL poses a clear threat to Britain. Thirty British holidaymakers were murdered on the beach in Tunisia in July, and we know that seven ISIL-related terror attacks against British people have been stopped in the past year. Paris could have happened in London.

There is no hope of negotiating with ISIL. We must stop the flow of fighters, finance and arms to its headquarters in Raqqa. We need military action to stop it murdering Syrians and Iraqis, and to disrupt its propaganda machine, which poisons the minds of our young people and leads them to commit appalling acts at home and abroad. For the past 14 months, UK forces have carried out airstrikes against ISIL in Iraq, with no civilian casualties, so for me it makes no sense to turn back our planes at the Syrian border and allow ISIL to regroup in Syria.

In September, as Labour’s shadow International Development Secretary, I visited Lebanon, where 1.5 million Syrian refugees have sought sanctuary. One in four people in Lebanon is a Syrian refugee. The Department for International Development has made a huge contribution to the aid effort there, opening up Lebanese schools to Syrian children so that they can continue their education and have some form of normality after witnessing the horrors of that war.

I met Iman, a 65-year-old grandmother from Aleppo, who was imprisoned by President Assad for two weeks when she bravely returned from Lebanon to Syria, after her son was killed, to rescue her five orphaned grandchildren. She lives in a shack made of breeze blocks in the port city of Sidon. Hadia told me how her husband, a Red Cross volunteer, was killed in Syria, and how her four older children are still trapped in Homs. She did not want to go to Germany under a resettlement programme, because she could not take her elderly mother with her and did not want to leave her alone to die in a camp. I met Ahmed from Raqqa and 10-year-old girls working in the fields as agricultural labourers—their childhoods stolen from them—after ISIL had taken over their town, although that is still better than staying in Raqqa and being enslaved there.

There is a massive humanitarian crisis in Syria: 250,000 people have been killed, there are 4.7 million refugees outside the country and 6 million have been internally displaced.

[George Kerevan]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Mary Creagh]

I will not. I want other Members to have the chance to speak, as we have all been waiting to do.

The UK has given aid to Jordan and Syria, but aid is not the answer to the problems of Syria. Peace is the answer, and we need a fresh diplomatic effort to bring peace to that country. The Vienna talks offer real hope of that, with Russia, Saudi Arabia and Iran all around the table for the first time.

We voted against action in 2013, after the sarin gas attacks—a vote I regret and now believe to be wrong. We now have the largest refugee crisis since world war two. The war in Syria has no end and no laws, and ISIL is expanding its caliphate there. We have had no strategy for Syria, and now we have no easy choices. We need a ceasefire, a political settlement and a path to democratic elections, which is why I shall support the Government tonight.

European Council

Mary Creagh Excerpts

Monday 19th October 2015 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I have not seen that specific statement, but I will look at it because my hon. Friend makes an important point. Everything we can do, not just to help Syrian refugees stay in Lebanon, Jordan or Turkey, but to help Syrians stay in Syria, where they can, is clearly worthwhile, and my right hon. Friend the aid Secretary has done some extraordinarily good work on that.

[Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)]

May I tell the Prime Minister that there is dismay among civil society and church groups about his decision not to participate in the EU-Syria refugee resettlement programme? That decision stands in sharp contrast to the actions of Denmark and Ireland, which have chosen to participate in that programme despite not being parties to Schengen. I wish to press the Prime Minister: how many Syrian refugees have been resettled from the camps since he made his announcement last month?

[The Prime Minister]

Obviously the hon. Lady and I are not going to agree about this. I think we have taken the right approach—taking people from the refugee camps and not taking people under the EU relocation programme. We have been clear about that right from the start, which I think is why other European countries have not taken exception to what Britain is doing. We have said that we aim to resettle 1,000 people by Christmas and we will report back on how we have done after Christmas. I think that that is the right way to do it. I make the point that we have already resettled some 5,000 Syrians through other processes.

Rio+20 Summit

Mary Creagh Excerpts

Tuesday 26th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)]

I thank the Deputy Prime Minister for the advance copy of his statement.

The original Rio declaration sought to eradicate poverty, reduce unsustainable production and consumption, and promote greater co-operation to protect the world’s ecosystems. It is as relevant today as it was 20 years ago. Expectations were low for this summit, and those expectations were met. I pay tribute to the Deputy Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, who worked as part of the EU delegation to prevent the summit from reaching abject failure.

There was a glimmer of hope. Ban Ki-moon’s zero hunger challenge aims for a future in which everyone enjoys their basic human right to food and in which global food systems are resilient. It aims to provide access to adequate food all year round, increase small farm productivity and see zero waste of food. We welcome the UK’s contribution of £150 million to help meet the zero hunger challenge.

Will curbing land grabs by large companies and improving land rights, especially for women, be on the agenda of the high-level meeting on hunger that will take place during the Olympics? What does the Deputy Prime Minister make of the Prime Minister’s comments yesterday that a future Conservative Government would consider handing out some state benefits “in kind” rather than in cash? Does he think that handing out food vouchers to the poor is a good idea, when the Brazilian zero hunger scheme was based on the Bolsa Família, which gave money directly to families in poverty and let them choose how best to feed their children? How will the zero hunger initiative tackle food poverty in the UK, where the Trussell Trust charity estimates that it will feed 130,000 people this year, 45,000 of whom are children?

The Deputy Prime Minister mentioned that the Prime Minister, alongside the Presidents of Liberia and Indonesia, will co-chair a new UN committee to establish a new set of millennium development goals to follow those that expire in 2015. How will the new goals relate to the sustainable development goals that will emerge from Rio?

There was progress in the field of energy, with the Secretary-General’s sustainable energy for all initiative, which received pledges of $323 billion in funding to bring clean energy to more than a billion people in developing countries. We welcome that. We also welcome the Deputy Prime Minister’s announcement at Rio that the UK will introduce carbon reporting for 1,800 quoted companies from April next year, as set out in Labour’s landmark Climate Change Act 2008. That was, sadly, the weakest option that the Government consulted on. It creates the anomaly that British Airways will report its carbon footprint as a public company, but that Virgin Atlantic, as a private company, will not. However, we are the first country in the world to do it, which gives us a temporary, green competitive advantage to make up for the Government’s disastrous handling of the solar feed-in tariffs.

The agreements on biodiversity, oceans and the trade in endangered species are welcome. However, the Government have refused to guarantee funding for the UK’s wildlife crime unit after next April. Does he agree that that unit is on the front line of fighting the illegal trade in endangered species, and will he argue for its benefits at the heart of Government?

Sharing the benefits of the planet’s biodiversity equally is an important building block for what happens after Rio, yet the Government have still not ratified the Nagoya protocol, which was agreed last year, on access to and benefits from genetic resources. What assessment has he made of the action we need to take to comply with the protocol, and will the Government show leadership in the EU by ratifying it?

We know that sustainable development starts at home. Far too often, the Government have been found wanting—they abolished the Sustainable Development Commission and failed to introduce marine protected areas, and their implementation of their forests policy was disastrous. Will the Deputy Prime Minister therefore tell the House how the Government will change how they do business to reflect the Rio conference outcomes?

Will the Government publish a UK action plan as a framework for the changes that they seek after Rio? Does the Deputy Prime Minister agree with his right hon. Friends the Secretaries of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, for International Development and for the Foreign Office that the Government need to invest more in a resource-efficient economy and low-carbon jobs to reduce costs and protect the UK from rising oil prices and energy dependency?

The Deputy Prime Minister should be in no doubt that the Opposition will work with him across party boundaries to achieve the long-term solutions that our planet needs. Rio showed that the solutions to ending hunger and deforestation, and to securing clean energy and water for the poorest, are all out there. We just need to scale them up.

The scientists tell us we must act now and businesses stand ready to play their part. The tragedy is that the politicians did not agree concrete mechanisms by which those things can happen, but as the Deputy Prime Minister has said, Rio was not a destination but a milestone on a long road. We stand ready to support the Government to make the change we need to deliver the future we want.

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I thank the hon. Lady for her recognition of what I think is our shared commitment to the agenda discussed at Rio. I totally share her support for the zero hunger initiative; I attended a session in Rio at which the initiative was discussed. She asked about the hunger summit that will be held this summer. I do not know the precise agenda, but she referred to the importance of legal rights to property and land, which are crucial to dealing with hunger sustainably.

The hon. Lady asked about the interaction between sustainable development goals, ill-defined though they were at the Rio summit, and the work on the post-2015 agenda. The Government’s strong view is that the sustainable development goals as defined by the group of 30 representatives, which will be established in September, must feed into the wider review of the millennium development goals through the high-level panel that has been established by the Secretary-General.

I will not disguise from the hon. Lady the fact that within that procedural complexity, there are a lot of sensitivities. Candidly, some developing countries have hitherto felt that their voice is not strongly enough heard in some UN processes. The Prime Minister and his co-chairs will work hard to ensure that the voices of the developing world are properly listened to in the review of the MDGs to allay the concern that precisely the part of the world that will benefit most from the process is shut out from it. We need to do quite of lot of work to ensure that the different acronyms and processes do not start becoming rival acronyms and process—that is a danger.

The hon. Lady mentioned the sustainable energy for all initiative, which I am glad she supports; it is an outstanding initiative. I hosted a preparatory meeting of the group on the initiative in London some months ago. We had hoped that the Rio declaration would adopt the initiative as a core conclusion. In the event, because of the nervousness of some participants on what the initiative means and its implications, it was “recognised” in the declaration. We would have inserted a stronger verb, but none the less, as with all those initiatives, we now need to exploit that recognition and work on it.

The hon. Lady complained that the proposal on greenhouse gas emissions reporting does not go far enough. We have to start somewhere. We are the only country doing this. Some people complain that we have already gone too far and are imposing too many burdens on business. Other business groups, such as the CBI, have welcomed the proposal. I think we are breaking new ground, and I hope she will welcome that rather than cast aspersions on it.

The hon. Lady will know that the Darwin initiative is a robust initiative that we are using to monitor the plight of endangered species. Finally, she rightly said that these summits make sense only if one acts consistently with them at home. We are rightly proud of our record: we are the first country to establish a green investment bank; the green deal, which will be up and running in the coming six to eight months or so, will be the largest initiative of its kind for installing energy efficiency measures and bringing down energy bills in homes up and down the country; and the green sector, the green economy, is growing by about 5% a year, employs close to 1 million people in this country and actually runs a trade surplus. That is something we should cherish and celebrate. The carbon floor price is another major innovation of the Government, while the electricity market reform, which is one of the most ambitious legislative and regulatory overhauls of an electricity market I am aware of anywhere in the developed world, is explicitly designed to ensure that we have a sustainable energy mix for future generations.