Oral Answers to Questions

Virendra Sharma Excerpts

Wednesday 12th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my hon. Friend for his campaign. I believe that we should tackle microplastic pollution, and I am glad that the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is looking at the introduction of legislation for microfibre filters on washing machines as a cost-beneficial solution. I will ensure that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs keeps him informed of how we are doing.

[Mr Virendra Sharma (Ealing, Southall) (Lab)]

Q8. I, too, wish to join colleagues in paying tribute to Jack Dromey. I knew him first in the early ’70s and worked with him on the Grunwick strike. He will be greatly missed. Thousands of men and women in Afghanistan supported the NATO mission and they have been abandoned. After six months, we do not have a credible route to help people out of Afghanistan safely. The most recent update from the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office is directly contradicted by the UN. While the FCDO claims that from spring the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees will make referrals to evacuation schemes, the UNHCR’s own website is clear that it makes no such referrals. Are the Government creating a Kafkaesque system to intentionally fail those we owe something to, or is this yet another case of the amateurism and hopelessness that prioritised Pen Farthing’s pets over human beings?

[The Prime Minister]

I believe the hon. Member does a serious injustice to the efforts of local councils up and down the country to look after people coming from Afghanistan and I think he does an injustice to the efforts of the UK. We are proud under Operation Pitting to have already evacuated 15,000 people from Afghanistan. We have allocated £286 million in assistance for people in Afghanistan and we are continuing to offer safe passage to this country from Afghanistan.