Oral Answers to Questions

Robert Flello Excerpts

Tuesday 24th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Clearly there is agreement across the EU that we need to address these issues upstream, and one of the most pressing upstream challenges is the civil war in Syria. As I have already said once this afternoon, the Prime Minister will set out our comprehensive approach to that problem—military, political and humanitarian—on Thursday.

[Robert Flello (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Lab)]

What part of the discussions at the EU Foreign Affairs Council has centred on the very real genocide that is happening, including in UNHCR refugee camps in Lebanon, Jordan and the Kurdish autonomous region, by radicalised Islamists linked to Daesh who are killing people—killing Christians—in those camps and driving them out of them?

[Mr Hammond]

I have to tell the hon. Gentleman candidly that that has not been the focus of the discussion in the Foreign Affairs Council about the migration crisis, but I am aware of concerns about what is going on in the camps. The UK’s approach is to invest heavily in providing safe and appropriate facilities for refugees in the region so they can return to Syria in due course, and we will continue to advocate that approach and encourage our EU partners to put more money into that effort.