Syria: Refugees and Counter-terrorism

Philippa Whitford Excerpts

Monday 7th September 2015 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I repeat the figure of about 11 million people taken out of their homes. All our interests are in those people going back to their homes. That obviously needs a solution to the Syrian crisis, but it is the right answer rather than an even bigger movement of people.

[Dr Philippa Whitford (Central Ayrshire) (SNP)]

We welcome the Prime Minister’s statement, but when he talks about 11 million people in the camps in Syria and the impossibility of moving them and investing in them, does that not suggest that the policy should be the opposite—to help with the crisis of the people who are on the streets in Europe and fund the camps to protect and keep the people on the border and in the region of Syria?

[The Prime Minister]

We are funding the camps in Jordan, in Lebanon and in Turkey. The point I am trying to make about the 11 million is that, given that so far only 3% of the 11 million have moved to Europe, we have to be careful not to create an incentive so that that 3% becomes 10% or 20%, because that would completely overwhelm the capacity of even the most generous state, such as Germany, to receive people. That is why investing in the refugee camps and not just helping those in the camps outside Syria but working with UN agencies about how to help people inside Syria, which I was discussing with Stephen O’Brien this morning, is so important in trying not only to stop the scale of the movement but to save lives at the same time.