Oral Answers to Questions

Michelle Donelan Excerpts

Wednesday 24th February 2016 Commons Chamber

The Prime Minister was asked—

[Michelle Donelan (Chippenham) (Con)]

Q1. If he will list his official engagements for Wednesday 24 February.

[The Prime Minister (Mr David Cameron)]

The House will be aware of the dreadful accident that occurred at Didcot power station yesterday afternoon, in which one person died and three are missing. I know that the whole House will join me in sending our condolences to the family and friends of the victim and our best wishes to those who are still missing or injured. I pay tribute to the quick and incredibly brave actions of our emergency services, who dealt with the incident with typical professionalism. The Health and Safety Executive will carry out a full investigation to find out what led to the tragedy.

This morning I had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others and in addition to my duties in the House, I shall have further such meetings later today.

[Michelle Donelan]

I would like to associate myself and the people of Wiltshire with the Prime Minister’s sentiments about the occurrence in Didcot.

Wiltshire has successfully integrated a number of Syrian refugees, including babies and children, who might otherwise have frozen or starved to death in the camps. However, there has been a serious delay by the Home Office, despite Wiltshire Council’s claims to have tried to introduce more refugees into the area. Will the Prime Minister tell us what more he can do on the matter? Will he look into it? Will he also outline what we can do to fulfil our moral duty to those desperate people?

[The Prime Minister]

Let me pay tribute to Wiltshire Council and to the many councils up and down our country that have done a magnificent job of integrating and taking in Syrian refugees and their families, finding them homes, finding them schools and, I hope, in time, finding them jobs, too. If we look at what has happened across Europe with the relocation and resettlement programme, we see that Britain has done far better than any other country. We said 1,000 by Christmas, and we have delivered 1,000 by Christmas.

My hon. Friend asked what more we can do. First of all, I will make sure that she can meet the Home Office to talk about how we can make sure the system works well. We will continue to invest in the Syrian refugee camps, not least with the $11 billion that we raised at the landmark London conference. We will continue to do what we can to deliver the 20,000 Syrian refugees we said we would take into our country.