Thangam Debbonaire
Main Page: Thangam Debbonaire (Labour - Bristol West)Department Debates - View all Thangam Debbonaire's debates with the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office
(6 years, 4 months ago)
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Sir Alan Duncan
We have already offered places to some of the White Helmets and, in the past, if I am right, we have offered 20,000 Syrians resettlement opportunities in the UK. We are working, and will continue to work, with non-governmental organisations that will, as the hon. Gentleman rightly points out, have vulnerable people delivering humanitarian aid in Syria. It is essential that we know where they are and what they are doing and that we do everything we can on the ground, however limited it might be, to work with others to make sure they and their lives are protected.
Thangam Debbonaire (Bristol West) (Lab)
This country’s resettlement scheme is good and well respected, and last year 6,200 Syrian refugees were resettled here, but 50% of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees’ estimated 1.2 million refugees worldwide are Syrian, and we can do so much more. We are one of the states parties signatories to the New York declaration of 2016. Sections 77 to 79 state our intention to expand resettlement and encourage other countries to do the same, but last year only 35 countries accepted resettled refugees, so will the Minister please commit to doing all he can both to expand our very good resettlement programme and to encourage others to do likewise so that more refugees come through safe and legal routes?
Sir Alan Duncan
The House and our voters can be rightly proud of what we have done since the beginning of this conflict seven years ago. Up to the end of March this year, we had resettled more than 11,000 refugees through the vulnerable persons resettlement scheme. We will also resettle up to 3,000 children and their families from the middle east under the vulnerable children resettlement scheme; up to the end of March, we had resettled more than 700 refugees through the scheme. This is the cause to which we have given the largest ever amount from our own budgets, and we are the second-largest multilateral donor. Our original intention was to help people in and around Syria, so that they did not need to come here, but that has turned out not to be the case, which is why the UK is doing both. We can be proud that we are doing both to a considerable degree.