EU Council, Security and Middle East

Susan Elan Jones Excerpts

Monday 1st September 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I always believe in consulting this House. I did so over Syria and over Libya. What I—as well as the Foreign Secretary and Defence Secretary—will try to do is to keep the House permanently updated. As I said in answer to a previous question, that is the right approach and it has been taken by successive Governments. If, however, something needed to be done urgently to protect a particular British national interest or to prevent some humanitarian catastrophe, it might be necessary to act and then come to Parliament. I have said nothing new in that, but it is important for people to understand the situations we face.

[Susan Elan Jones (Clwyd South) (Lab)]

I very much welcome what the Prime Minister said about the importance of tackling the extremist narrative. Is he aware, however, that his parliamentary candidate in Dudley North told The Independent on Sunday:

“Jihadist narrative answers the questions that these young people ask”,

and that

“IS provides an opportunity to do something real, exciting and spiritually nourishing”?

Those comments are preposterous; what does the Prime Minister propose to do about them?

[The Prime Minister]

I will check the context of those comments, as I expect the candidate went on to say how wrong that is, which I know is his view. It is unreasonable to cite what I suspect is a partial quote rather than the whole thing.