Turkish Incursion into Northern Syria Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateStephen Twigg
Main Page: Stephen Twigg (Labour (Co-op) - Liverpool, West Derby)Department Debates - View all Stephen Twigg's debates with the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office
(4 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberUrgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
I thank my right hon. Friend. The Government share her assessment. NATO has never been stronger, but it also faces unprecedented and novel threats and strains within it in relation to burden sharing but also the different political views that are there. In relation to Turkey itself, she makes quite an important point in relation to, I think, the arms purchases from Russia. We need to be very careful to exercise absolute clarity with our Turkish partners and allies to be clear that they must end this incursion, but equally—I think this is the point she was making—to avoid driving Turkey into the arms of Russia and President Putin.
I congratulate the right hon. Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood) on securing this urgent question and agree with everything he said. I want to raise with the Secretary of State a specific humanitarian consequence of what is happening, which is about access to water in north-east Syria. I am told that the Red Cross and the Syrian Arab Red Crescent are responding to urgent concerns around the city of Hasakeh, which has a population of 400,000 and may start to run dry shortly. Can he work with colleagues in the Department for International Development to address that as a matter of urgency?
The hon. Gentleman is right. The action by Turkey and the way it has caught not only its international partners but the UN and other agencies on the ground off guard, if I can put it like that, has created a whole range of humanitarian challenges, including the one that he raises. I will speak to the International Development Secretary, and we will work closely with the agencies—the UN and the NGOs on the ground—to ensure we do everything we can to alleviate that.