Libya

Philip Hollobone Excerpts

Tuesday 19th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

The hon. Gentleman raises a good point. There has been an assumption across the House that any training that we give would have to be provided by UK military personnel. Some of what will be needed will be police training, and perhaps the PSNI in particular could make a contribution to that. It is also quite possible that some of the training—perhaps all training—will be delivered by contractors, and often ex-military personnel working for contractors, rather than by serving military personnel.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

The main concern of my constituents in Kettering about Libya is that the country is the main and growing conduit for illegal immigration from safe and unsafe countries in Africa. If the Government of national accord in Libya are unwilling or unable to make this a national priority, and if my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary is unable or unwilling to press the case for how important that is for us, what is the EU plan to prevent this year from being one of a disastrous set of circumstances in which we are about to experience a mass wave of illegal immigration very dangerously across the Mediterranean towards Italy?

[Mr Hammond]

To reassure my hon. Friend, the Libyan Government do understand the importance of that issue. They understand the importance for Libya because having organised criminal traffic across its borders undermines Libya’s sovereignty. They also understand the importance of addressing the issue for Libya’s relations with the international community. The point that I was making is that we must put this agenda in the context of the many other immediate challenges facing the Libyan people.

In answer to my hon. Friend’s second question about what the EU is doing in the meantime, EUNAVFOR MED Operation Sophia—the European naval operation in the Mediterranean—is designed to intercept people seeking to migrate on an irregular basis into the European Union from Libya.