Business of the House

Stewart Malcolm McDonald Excerpts

Thursday 12th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lidington]

We are providing an enormous amount of support—almost £2.5 billion—to ease the humanitarian crisis in Syria and neighbouring countries. That is helping people in the region, including Yazidi refugees. Our resettlement schemes are also giving as much priority as possible to people who have been victims or who are at risk of sexual abuse, and to women and children who are particularly vulnerable. Clearly we always look actively at other ways in which we can help those people. The Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood), who has responsibility for the middle east, is sitting alongside me on the Front Bench and he will have heard the points made by the hon. Lady.

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald (Glasgow South) (SNP)]

There cannot be much that cheapens the honours system more than dishing out gongs to people who have been found by a UN committee to have breached human rights, including those of disabled people. I am talking not of a despotic regime, but of two senior civil servants at the Department for Work and Pensions. With that in mind, will the Leader of the House facilitate a debate on how we can reform the honours system?

[Mr Lidington]

No. The Government have already made it clear that we regard the report from that particular UN committee as a grotesque misrepresentation of the state of affairs in the United Kingdom. For one thing, it took no account of our very successful record in getting a record number of disabled people into work, or of the support programmes for disabled people who are in work.