Humanitarian Crisis in the Mediterranean and Europe

Richard Graham Excerpts

Wednesday 9th September 2015 Commons Chamber

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

We should be clear. The hon. Gentleman says that we cannot let these countries alone help the refugees. Britain has provided more—not just in money, but in aid in helping displaced people live—than Norway, the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, France, Italy, Finland, Belgium and Ireland together, and they are nine of the 10 EU countries in the top 20 donors in the world. Should he not accept that we should all be proud of what we have done so far and that we can build on it as well, as the Prime Minister has announced?

[Angus Robertson]

I am disappointed in the hon. Gentleman. I do not know whether he has just come in, but obviously he has not been listening to a word I have said. I said from the beginning of this opening speech that I am not interested in a bidding war or a discordant note across the Chamber about the things we agree on, and I paid tribute—including following another prompting—to the Government for their effort, and I will continue to do so. I hope that the hon. Gentleman listens to what I am saying. We should ask ourselves, individually and collectively: “Are we doing everything we can?”

In May the European Commission announced emergency resettlement mechanisms that would encompass 40,000 refugees, and today it announced a second emergency mechanism that will involve the relocation of 120,000 refugees from Hungary, Greece and Italy. The Commission called on member states to come to a Commission meeting on 13 September and take a share of that 120,000. Jean-Claude Juncker of the Commission said he wanted “everyone on board”, which I imagine includes the United Kingdom—I certainly hope it does, because the door should not be closed on refugees. He said that action is needed, and action is being undertaken by the United Kingdom. We welcome that—let me say that again—and we ask what more we can do.

Our motion recognises the funding that the Government have committed to humanitarian initiatives to provide sanctuary for refugees in camps across the middle east, as that makes a real difference to people’s lives. It calls for a greater international effort through the United Nations to secure the position of displaced people, and recognises that the Government have committed—again, I stress that we welcome this—to accepting 20,000 vulnerable people from camps in Syria over the next five years. We are calling for additional action, and we hope that, in the spirit in which the motion has been drafted, Government Members will find themselves able to agree. We have called for a Government report to be laid before the House by 12 October 2015 when Parliament returns from the conference recess—that point was made during Prime Minister’s questions by the acting leader of the Labour party, and it seems entirely reasonable.

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[Justine Greening]

The Disasters Emergency Committee is a fantastic way of enabling some of the most incredible NGOs, which often happen to be UK NGOs, to come together and work effectively to raise funding. I would certainly support such a move if the DEC chose to do that. In the past it has done so. At Christmas 2013 we match-funded part of a DEC appeal in order to ensure its success, and we will continue to look at how we can use that as a mechanism to share the priorities of the British people, which we are already mirroring in the amount of effort we are putting into the Syrian crisis.

The point I was making was that in the end we need a broader international response. It is worth saying that the UN appeal this year was in the region of $8 billion. The hon. Member for Moray (Angus Robertson) commented on the amount that Germany is spending on refugees who are in Germany, which, as he said, is around $6 billion. We can start to see that we need to think carefully about effective funding of the UN appeal. We have been part of a sustained lobbying effort, particularly on the part of myself and the Prime Minister, to press other countries to follow that lead. We have helped to raise around $6.9 billion for the Syrian crisis over the past two years. Last year we co-hosted a ministerial meeting at the UN General Assembly which alone raised $1 billion.

We have to understand that these humanitarian emergencies do not clear themselves up over one or two years. That is part of a funding problem that needs to be fixed. The length of time that people spend as refugees is rising. In 1980 people could expect to spend perhaps nine years as refugees. Now they may expect to spend 20 years, so a child born in the Zaatari camp now will grow to adulthood away from home. We need a step change in the way that the international community supports refugees.

[Richard Graham]

rose—

[Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)]

rose—

[Justine Greening]

I will give way first to my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham).

[Richard Graham]

The UK has a good track record in providing match-funding for good causes to help people in disaster zones. Would she consider arranging for match-funding for a new vehicle which would be available to everybody in the UK who wants to donate specifically to help Syrian refugees settle in this country?

[Justine Greening]

My hon. Friend has put an interesting and brand new idea on the table. I am sure it will not be the only proposal that we hear in the debate today. I will take all of them back and look carefully at the art of the possible to see what we can do and how we can knit together, as we already do in many other humanitarian responses, the amazing generosity of the British people with the work that the UK Government are doing, often with NGOs, to provide the support that we seek to give.

We need a step change in the way that the international community supports refugees. We must recognise that the existing model for crisis funding supports short-term need but not protracted displacement. What that means in practice is that we see food, life-saving medical support and shelter understandably prioritised. What is left out of that UN work when it is only half-funded is education for children, work on helping to provide skills for young men so that they have the prospect of a successful livelihood ahead of them, and the work needed by host communities, which may see their populations double. The UK is focused on providing a lot of support in that vein. The problem is that it cannot be done at scale when UN appeals are as underfunded as the present one is. That, I am sorry to say, is symptomatic of other appeals for which the UN does not have appropriate funding.

We must look down the line at the challenges that we will face. Even today, we heard the President of the European Commission talking about the need for stepped-up EU activity to address the wider root causes of the refugee crisis by fighting poverty, improving governance and helping to support sustainable growth.

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[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for calling me to talk about an issue that defines this summer and probably a longer period.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Moray (Angus Robertson) on tabling a motion on this humanitarian issue, which is vital not just to all of us here, but to many of our constituents. I would argue that the underlying issue is broader than that laid out in his motion. Why are there so many failing states in the middle east and north Africa? How can we help to prevent those states from reaching the chaos where so many millions of people are displaced, mostly outside their own country? What is it that states such as Jordan and Morocco have that makes them so much more successful? How can a region take ownership both of its people, as Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey are doing so spectacularly with help from the west, and of its stability and security? Those are critical questions, but I recognise that they are for another day and I hope that it comes soon.

The hon. Member for Moray introduced his motion with moving reference to his own story about the arrival of his mother in this country, which helps to explain his commitment to helping other refugees. There is much to agree with in his motion. It recognises the Government’s huge contribution to the camps for refugees from Syria and the commitment to take on 20,000 vulnerable Syrian refugees from those camps. It calls for a “full and proper role” for the UK in providing sanctuary.

However, the motion is very short of detail in some ways and divisive in one critical way. It calls for

“a greater international effort through the United Nations to secure the position of such displaced people”,

but what does that mean? The hon. Gentleman did not shed any light on what he expects the United Nations to do. Does it encompass the proposal from my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) for safe havens inside Syria? Is the hon. Gentleman thinking of no-fly zones? He said nothing about what he wants from the United Nations. I offer the thought that perhaps the most successful intervention by the United Nations in a state that had been through civil war was in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which was run by the United Nations for a period of years before being successfully returned under democratic elections. We need to look at that more closely in the longer term.

The line that reveals the divisiveness of the motion is that which calls for the Government to report on

“how that number can be increased”.

That comes only two days after the Prime Minister’s announcement that our country would take 20,000 refugees. The hon. Member for Moray denied that this was a bidding war, but that is exactly what it looks and feels like. A cry goes up, “Something must be done.” A Labour leadership candidate agrees and says, “Yes, we should take 10,000.” The Prime Minister agrees and announces the framework and terms for taking 20,000 refugees, but the SNP, on its Opposition day, asks how that number can be increased, without mentioning a figure—neither the hon. Member for Moray, nor anybody else speaking for his party today has done so. We can be sure that if the Government did come back to raise the figure, whatever it was raised to would not be enough, and the SNP and others would ask how we could increase it further.

[Hywel Williams]

If it is a bidding war, how did the Government reach a figure of 20,000, rather than 20,001 or 19,999? I did ask the Secretary of State that precise question earlier—I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman was in his place then—and she was unable to give me a proper answer.

[Richard Graham]

I am not sure whether there was a question in there, Madam Deputy Speaker, although there may be one for the Government to offer on. The important thing I was going to say is that we should not get obsessed with a particular figure. We have heard moving speeches this afternoon from Members echoing what I believe to be the core point of the motion, which we all share: the requirement on the nation and on all of us to respond with compassion to an international disaster.

Several Members, most movingly my hon. Friend the Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Nicola Blackwood), in an echo of what the hon. Member for Moray said, have told us that they are from immigrant families. I was working on aid projects in Africa almost 30 years ago, helping displaced people from neighbouring countries around there, and I was in Hong Kong when its Government, on behalf of the British Government, were trying to deal with the Vietnamese boat people. It is incredibly easy for people to be critical of situations involving refugees if they are not dealing with it themselves and do not have the responsibility at the time. We should recognise that, as many Members have said. This nation does have a strong record, and we should be pulling together and doing our best to help people in the ways that we can.

On that note, I thought the most discordant speech heard in this Chamber for a long while—it was almost a disgraceful speech—was that by the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron). He seems to have entirely forgotten that his party, when in coalition government with my party, was responsible for bringing together this considerable increase in our commitment to international development, which has led to our being able to provide huge sums in funding and help hundreds of thousands of people, if not more than 1 million, in the refugee camps just outside Syria. It was extraordinary that all he could bring himself to say was that this Government “react with dogs” and barbed wire, in a reference to Calais. He made no reference to what is being achieved for the refugees from Syria. Unfortunately, a number of Members have descended into making party political points, especially the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter), who sounded the most extraordinary, tribal note, referring to a “rush to arms”, which is not even the subject of this debate. Instead of doing that, we should be focusing today on what we all share and what we can achieve together.

On that note, I wish to make a practical suggestion that I believe would make a real difference to this nation’s handling of the refugee crisis. I touched on it earlier in an intervention on my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State. The most practical thing we can do is encourage the leading charities and non-governmental organisations, perhaps in that meeting on Friday with the Government, to come together to create a new Syrian refugee fund, perhaps administered by Save the Children in particular, although others should be involved. Such a fund would allow so many of our generous constituents around the whole country to contribute, and it should be matched pound for pound by the Government. That would enable a significant fund to be available to help the refugees when they come to this country. It could be disbursed through local government authorities or it could be done directly, but all these are issues that should be resolved. We have done this before. We did it successfully in response to the typhoon in the Philippines about 18 months ago, when many people in our constituencies contributed. St Peter’s school in my constituency raised funds and gave a lot of time towards doing so. Such an approach helps the people of Britain to realise that the Government share their sympathy and compassion, and will match what they give pound for pound. That is a practical suggestion that would help us.

Some hon. Members have intimated that we should do almost everything that Germany is doing. It seems to me extraordinary that we should feel obliged to get into some form of bidding war with Germany, of all nations. We should surely recognise that Germany is dealing not only with today’s humanitarian crisis—[Interruption.] The SNP would do well to listen—but with her own modern history. We should respect and admire that but not see German commitments as a competitive challenge.

We should recognise that each country can contribute differently. For example, the role of the Royal Navy in the Mediterranean in saving more than 6,000 people who might otherwise have drowned is not something that many countries in the European Union could emulate, and certainly not Germany. We should recognise that we can all make our own separate and different contribution to the crisis. We should pull together; make sure that we get on with implementing what has already been announced by the Prime Minister, and not try to split hairs about numbers of refugees; encourage the charities to create the fund in which the Government will match what individuals donate; locally capture significant offers of help through the asylum and refugee offices in our own counties; and make it happen.