Tunisia, and European Council

Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh Excerpts

Monday 29th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my hon. Friend for raising that case, and for the way in which he did it. The assurance I can give him and all those who are wounded and being looked after in Tunisian hospitals is that our medical team is on the ground, and for those who can be repatriated as medical evacuations using a C-17, all the technology and medical brilliance that we brought to bear when bringing casualties back from Afghanistan is available to British citizens in Tunisia. If it is possible to move someone and bring them back to the QE2 in Birmingham, that is exactly what will be done.

[Ms Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh (Ochil and South Perthshire) (SNP)]

I thank the Prime Minister for his statement. In the past two days, I have spoken to my constituent Holly Graham, whose parents Billy and Lisa Graham are still missing following the attack. There has been public concern about the time it is taking for the authorities to update families in the UK on their relatives in Tunisia, although I fully understand that the UK and Tunisian Governments are working hard to get good quality information to the families here as quickly as possible. Will the Prime Minister use this opportunity to set out the challenges that the authorities in Tunisia and here in the UK are facing when trying to trace UK citizens who have been caught up in these dreadful events?

[The Prime Minister]

I thank the hon. Lady for the way she put her question, because I share all the frustration of the families and the communities who want to get this information as fast as possible. Scotland’s Deputy First Minister, John Swinney, was in the Cobra conference by video-link to Scotland and raised some of those issues himself. Just to bring home the importance of not making an announcement before we have the information, I should say that two people who were down as missing and whom we were very concerned about turned up back in Britain today, having come home under means that we did not know about. The reason it is taking some time to identify the victims is twofold: people who were on the beach did not, quite understandably, have on them passports or means of identification; and, tragically, in some cases it is difficult to identify people after the horrific attacks that took place. In addition, the coroner in Tunisia, quite understandably, wants to make sure that no mistakes are made, so there is a full pathway from the moment of recognising the victim and all the coronial action that subsequently has to take place.