Mike Gapes
Main Page: Mike Gapes (The Independent Group for Change - Ilford South)Department Debates - View all Mike Gapes's debates with the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office
(6 years, 5 months ago)
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Sir Alan Duncan
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. From the very beginning of this conflict, when we were looking at so many displaced people, a significant fraction of the humanitarian aid—or at least, the DFID budget spending—went to surrounding countries that were so generously accommodating to those who had fled, so it is inevitable that a large part of that budget will continue to go to such countries. Of course, in an ideal world, we would like to see Syrians return to their homes, but those have been so devastated that people would be going back only to rubble in many cases. It is inevitable that a lot of displaced Syrians will remain outside their former country for a long time to come.
Mike Gapes (Ilford South) (Lab/Co-op)
I also congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern) on bringing this matter to us today. Is it not a fact that what the Russians and the Assad regime are doing is driving out moderate forces, forcing them away and, as a result, increasing the territory that is under the control of Daesh affiliate Jaysh Khalid Ibn al-Waleed? Does that not indicate that this is not an agenda that we could in any way support in any negotiated process? Is it not time that the international community as a whole called the murderers and liars in the Russian regime and the Assad regime to account?
Sir Alan Duncan
The hon. Gentleman is very well experienced in this area and speaks with authority in the House. A lot of what the Russians have done is absolutely contemptible. They have continued close military co-operation with the regime, in spite of the atrocities committed by it, including the use of chemical weapons. To go back to what we were discussing earlier, they have demonised the White Helmets as bad people and agents of the west, and as people who have committed atrocities themselves, when in fact, they are the most generous-spirited, decent citizens that we could ever hope to find anywhere in the world, in many ways. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to draw the difference between what is right and what is wrong in this conflict.