Counter-Daesh Update

Robert Largan Excerpts

Thursday 4th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Dominic Raab]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman: there is a whole range of international collaboration that goes on. I have to say that the principal cause is not some sort of underlying, opaque set of socioeconomic conditions; it is the fact that there is a tyrant in Syria, Daesh is feeding on the instability, and Iran is promoting proxies and militias in the region.

[Robert Largan (High Peak) (Con) [V]]

I welcome the statement and the Government’s commitment to tackle the lingering threat of Daesh. On Monday, a Syria relief report was published, authored by my constituent and Chapel-en-le-Frith resident Charles Lawley. The report found that 99% of internally displaced people in north-west Syria have symptoms compatible with post-traumatic stress disorder, yet only 1% were aware of any mental health support available to them. With this in mind, will the Foreign Secretary assure the House that the UK will continue to be a major donor to the humanitarian crisis in Syria and look carefully at support for mental trauma for victims of conflict?

[Dominic Raab]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We obviously focus on the material support—hygiene, water, sanitation and the like—but the scale of PTSD and wider mental health issues in those theatres, in the internally displaced persons camps, is legion. We need to keep our focus as best we can, in the incredibly difficult conditions that the aid and humanitarian workers operate in, to try to alleviate that suffering too.