Gaza Border Violence

Rosena Allin-Khan Excerpts

Tuesday 15th May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Alistair Burt]

No. Again, people have seen what they have seen in relation to parts of the protest. Let me be straight about the situation as far as I can see it. It is as wrong to say that everyone who took part in the demonstration is a terrorist as it is to say that everything was perfectly peaceful. We know that the truth lies in between. Of course, those who went to a protest armed and ready for confrontation may have been playing a part in raising the temperature, with some of the results that we saw yesterday. It is so important to examine the circumstances and call to account all those who may have had any responsibility to ensure that these deaths and injuries do not happen again.

[Dr Rosena Allin-Khan (Tooting) (Lab)]

Yesterday’s abhorrent massacre was a fire fuelled by a narcissistic American President who is content to watch the world burn. Never have I felt so strongly that he should not be allowed the visit the UK. If the planned trip goes ahead, I for one shall be joining the tens of thousands of people who will line the streets in protest. I implore the Government to cancel his visit.

[Alistair Burt]

The hon. Lady makes her points very strongly. It is not the view of the United Kingdom that the best way in which to engage with any country, particularly an important power and friend such as the United States, is in the manner that she suggests. Engagement, explanation and working together are the best ways in which to deal with the concerns that we have and the areas where we differ on policy.

Oral Answers to Questions

Rosena Allin-Khan Excerpts

Tuesday 15th May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Boris Johnson]

We will, of course, consider all possibilities once we exit the European Union and take back control of our sanctions policy.

[Dr Rosena Allin-Khan (Tooting) (Lab)]

At the European championships in 2016, Russian hooligans showed themselves to be organised, well armed and extremely violent. British fans’ safety must be our top priority at the World cup. Will the Secretary of State confirm whether the British diplomat responsible for fans’ safety at the World cup was expelled by Russia? If so, how can the Government even contemplate relying on Russian reassurances that our fans will be safe?

[Boris Johnson]

We are not actively trying to dissuade fans preparing to go to Russia for the World cup, as we do not think that would be right. They should look at our “Be on the Ball” website and the risks that we believe may be associated with any particular venues. But it is up to the Russians, and on their honour, to guarantee the safety of not just British fans, but fans from around the world.

Refugees and Human Rights

Rosena Allin-Khan Excerpts

Wednesday 24th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Dr Rosena Allin-Khan (Tooting) (Lab)]

In camps from Calais to Cox’s Bazar, there are hundreds upon thousands of people who have fled persecution, violence and disaster. They have not left their homes out of choice; they left their homes, their countries, everything that they know, because they were forced to. Many have suffered beyond our worst nightmares, with children burying their parents and parents burying their children.

I have worked for many years in refugee camps, but as an MP last year, I visited the Zaatari refugee camp on the border of Syria and Jordan. The people I spoke to there had one simple wish: to return home, to the home that they knew and the lives that they had—to return home to who they truly are. So, when the Bangladesh and Myanmar Governments say that plans are in place to return the Rohingya to Myanmar, it may sound like the first move to returning peace to the country, but we in the UK must be very clear that it is not.

Forcibly repatriating the Rohingya to Myanmar would be tantamount to sending them back to their deaths. Who will ensure their protection—the very military who killed their babies, tortured their menfolk, and who have systematically raped the women? The military who forced parents to make the decision whether to go and rescue their children from burning fires or—the ones who are still alive—to run and flee? We cannot once again turn a blind eye to human suffering—to people living in an apartheid state where citizenship is unattainable and where religious persecution has long been the status quo.

The challenge to the international community and to us is clear: how do we create the conditions, not just for the Rohingya, but for all stateless and persecuted minorities, to rebuild their homes without fear of persecution? This country’s response to that challenge goes to the essence of who we are as a people. I believe—I know—that British people are kind, courageous, brave and compassionate. Our Government should be acting to live up to that idea of the very best of Britain, but too often they have failed in the courage of their political convictions. Too often they have turned a blind eye.

I welcome the £59 million in aid to support the Rohingya refugees, but that is tantamount to putting a sticking-plaster on a gunshot wound and allowing the shooter to roam free. When will our Government have the courage to take the people who are the perpetrators of these atrocious crimes to the International Criminal Court?

Creating the conditions for refugees to return to their homes will have been achieved only once the fear they have in their hearts has gone. We can really lead the way through fierce, active diplomacy, and our Government must use all their leverage to bring about peaceful resolutions.

Our position on the world stage comes with immense responsibility. I hope that hon. Members across the House will join me in calling on the Government to take a much more active role in bringing the international community together, to provide those across the world fleeing war, facing danger and suffering in squalid camps not fit for the inhabitation of insects with the dignity and humanity they deserve.

Rohingya Crisis

Rosena Allin-Khan Excerpts

Tuesday 28th November 2017 Westminster Hall

[Dr Rosena Allin-Khan (Tooting) (Lab)]

The UK has a proud history of being courageous, compassionate and generous, and of leading the way on humanitarian rights in the international community. I am here to say that we must act to protect the Rohingya people.

Last week, I returned from the camps, where I was not just visiting but working as a doctor. I visited all the camps on the Myanmar-Bangladesh border and also went to the checkpoints. I promised the people I met that I would tell their stories. People had to choose between returning to the fires and picking their three children who were burning alive, or picking the two children who were still alive and running with a shirt over their back, making the treacherous journey over the border into Bangladesh. I held those charred babies in my arms and made a promise to tell their story.

I say on the record, as I have all week, that this is not ethnic cleansing. Ethnic cleansing is not a crime in humanitarian law. This is genocide—the systematic dehumanisation of a population of people—and we have to call it out. We are proud to be British and all that stands for. Our standing in the world is to be applauded. The amount we give to humanitarian efforts is absolutely wonderful, but it is tantamount to putting a sticking plaster on a gunshot wound and allowing the shooter to roam free. We cannot be bystanders to this genocide.

I met an imam who managed to escape into the bushes as the military arrived in his village and started shooting everybody. He described, through his tears, all the men being mutilated and killed as their wives were forced to watch; women being dragged backwards by their hair and gang raped repeatedly as their children were forced to watch; and their children, as they ran away screaming, being dragged back and thrown into the fires. I know that that is hard to hear, but I promised I would tell their stories.

We cannot be bystanders to a genocide in which a group of people really believe that throwing living babies into fire is just. What does that say about what we will allow to happen in our world? What does it say about the world that we are raising our families in? I met a four-year-old girl—the same age as my eldest daughter—who was absolutely mute because of the injuries she had sustained and the journey she had made, without her parents, into Bangladesh. She was able to say only, “They killed them all,” before being unable to speak again.

We are a full member of the UN Security Council, we have leverage and we can make changes. We cannot stand by and let this happen. I am calling for an independent ministerial delegation to go to Myanmar, into the Rakhine province, and to call this what it is.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mark Field]

Absolutely. We will. I am also wary of the idea of having a long-term presence there, rather like what has happened in the middle east where one has an unsustainable position for the longer term, but in the short term we need to have an independent international presence to police this matter.

The UK Government have concluded that the inexcusable violence perpetrated on the Rohingya by the Burmese military and ethnic Rakhine militia appears to be ethnic cleansing—or is ethnic cleansing. The UK has been leading the international response diplomatically, politically and in terms of humanitarian support.

[Dr Allin-Khan]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mark Field]

If the hon. Lady will excuse me, I am wary that I am running out of time and I want to touch on sanctions and other issues that have been raised.

On 6 November we proposed, and secured with unanimous support, the first UN Security Council presidential statement on Burma in a decade. With this the Security Council made clear its expectations of the Burmese authorities: no further excessive military force; immediate UN humanitarian access; mechanisms to allow voluntary return; and an investigation into human rights violations, including allegations of sexual violence.

Elsewhere in the UN, we are co-sponsoring a UN General Assembly resolution on the human rights situation in Burma. I note the comments made by my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester (Will Quince) about the importance of China in this situation. Please rest assured that a huge amount of work is going on at the UN to try to bring China on board. I think it would be wrong to overstate China’s leverage on these matters, and there are issues on the Chinese-Burmese border that are nothing to do with the Rohingya, but hon. Members are correct that China has an important role to play. The resolution we are proposing has received the support of 135 member states at the Third Committee. The strong international support for this resolution and the Security Council’s presidential statement send a powerful signal to the Burmese authorities about the military’s conduct and the lasting damage it will do to their international reputation.

May I touch on sanctions, which the hon. Members for Bethnal Green and Bow (Rushanara Ali) and for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) mentioned? We impose our sanctions through the EU, but we must secure the consensus of all member states. At the October EU Foreign Affairs Council, the Foreign Secretary secured agreement to consider additional measures if the situation did not improve. Evidently, it has not. If the Burmese authorities do not heed the call of the 6 November UNSC presidential statement, we will be returning to EU partners to press for agreement on further measures, which could include targeted sanctions along the lines that the hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Bow referred to. But we would want to be clear about what impact they were having on the military’s conduct, as indeed would our EU partners. I pledge to the House that we will be giving very serious consideration to trying to work out the appropriateness of such sanctions, including to try to discover whether there is any property or companies owned by the Burmese military.

I attended the Asia-Europe Foreign Ministers meeting in Naypyidaw last Monday and Tuesday and had meetings with the Minister of Defence, Sein Win, the Deputy Foreign Minister, Kyaw Tin, and Aung San Suu Kyi’s chief of staff, Kyaw Tint Swe. My hon. Friend the Member for St Albans (Mrs Main) will, I hope, be pleased to learn that I did not pussyfoot about. I referred on each occasion to “Rohingya” and got a lecture for my pains in doing so, but we will continue to do so on that basis.

[Dr Allin-Khan]

I very much appreciate the Minister giving way. Although I acknowledge that the geopolitics of the region might make it difficult for our Government to speak out against Myanmar, and I appreciate that he was there last week at the same time I was, does he not agree that we stood by and blinked while the Rwandan genocide happened and, given the nature of the crimes against humanity that are currently being committed, while we play around with semantics we risk being bystanders to yet another genocide?

[Mark Field]

The hon. Lady will be aware that I think of this a great deal. I am very much aware, as we should all be in the international community, that we are faced with a set of problems, and one could argue that they are not dissimilar to what happened in Rwanda, Sri Lanka and Srebrenica, and at various other times. The international community needs to be able to come together, but it needs to do that in a united way, and the only way to do that is through the United Nations, which is why we continue to work tirelessly in that regard.

Any long-term resolution needs to address the issue of citizenship in Burma, as has been said. The report of Kofi Annan’s Advisory Commission on Rakhine State remains central to this, and I welcome Aung San Suu Kyi’s recent establishment of an international advisory board, including Lord Darzi and other respected international political figures, to ensure its implementation. She has publicly committed to implementing the commission’s recommendations, which include reviewing the controversial 1982 citizenship law and making progress on citizenship through the existing legal framework.

The main current impetus continues to be the urgent humanitarian needs of the Rohingya refugees. The UK is the single largest bilateral donor to the crisis. We have now contributed £59 million, as has been stated, and we are making a material difference. We are providing food for over 170,000 people, 140,000 people with safe water and sanitation, and emergency nutritional support to more than 60,000 vulnerable children under the age of five. On 23 October I represented the UK at an UN-organised pledging conference in Geneva, where through our leadership we were able to get more money. But the reality is that, as has been pointed out, that will take us through only to February, when we will need to go through that process again. More will be needed from us and others, and we will sustain the international leadership role on the humanitarian response to ensure that it happens.

I want to touch on sexual violence. I have already mentioned the horrifying accounts provided by some Rohingya refugees about sexual and gender-based violence. Earlier this month the UN’s special representative on sexual violence visited Bangladesh and heard consistent and harrowing reports of the widespread and systematic use of sexual violence against Rohingya women and girls, both in the past on the Burmese side of the border and now in the Bangladeshi camps. That clearly needs to stop. The extremely serious conclusions have meant that the UK Government have deployed two civilian experts to Bangladesh. We will obviously review that and whether to increase it to look at the current levels of investigation and documentation of these abhorrent crimes. They will provide us with advice on where the UK can continue to support this vital work. We are committed to ensuring that there is full support for victims and witnesses of these crimes. We need to have accountability, and we are determined that those who have committed human rights violations will be brought properly to account.

I want to thank everyone here for all that they have said. Please rest assured that my door remains open, as the Minister with responsibility in this area. Please feel free to get in touch at any stage if you are able to pass on either more evidence or the strength of the views of many of your constituents. I know that the hon. Member for City of Durham will want to say a few words, so I will sum up.

The UK Government will do our best to maintain a full range of humanitarian, political and diplomatic efforts, leading the international community’s response to this ongoing catastrophe and pressing Burma to meet urgently the expectations set out in the UN Security Council’s presidential statement. I know that diplomacy has a bad name sometimes, and it is something we have to be very determined to try to work together on. Please be assured that we are doing as much as we can. I wish that we could do more. I wish that this situation could be resolved. I wish that there was more goodwill in that part of the world. The Foreign Office will remain steadfastly determined to ensure, as far as we can, the safe return of the Rohingya people, to ensure access for humanitarian aid and to hold to account those who are responsible for these harrowing crimes.

Budget Resolutions

Rosena Allin-Khan Excerpts

Monday 27th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Boris Johnson]

If I may, I will make a little more progress.

The right hon. Gentleman will be pleased to know that a new tech business is being created in Britain every hour, and we are dedicating another £500 million to initiatives ranging from 5G mobile communications to full fibre broadband networks.

This Budget presses on with the most ambitious renewal of our national infrastructure in living memory, including the biggest programme of improvements to our road network since the 1970s and the biggest expansion of our railways since Victorian times, with Crossrail comprising the largest construction project in Europe, to say nothing of High Speed 2, the second biggest.

But we cannot prosper at home unless Britain plays our indispensable role in maintaining the stability and security of the world. It is the right thing to do, but it also means that global Britain is of direct benefit to all our constituents. Millions of British jobs depend on the benign and transformative power of free trade. Last year, we sold goods and services worth almost £100 billion to the United States. Our exports rely, therefore, on other countries being rich and peaceful enough to buy our British products.

When the Department for International Development invests £4 billion in development in Africa, we do this, and we are proud to do this, because it is right in itself and also because 70% of Africans are under the age of 25, the population of their continent is set to double to 2.4 billion by 2050, and these are the great markets of the future.

[Dr Rosena Allin-Khan (Tooting) (Lab)]

Last week I returned from the border of Bangladesh and Myanmar, where I heard of unspeakable crimes being committed against the Rohingya people. At this crucial time, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office has had its budget slashed, and I am worried about the effect this will have on our ability to prevent future crimes against humanity. I would like to share my findings with the Secretary of State, so will he kindly agree to meet me to discuss the evidence of genocide in Myanmar?

[Boris Johnson]

I must, I am afraid, correct the hon. Lady. The budget of the Foreign Office is rising from £1.2 billion to £1.24 billion, and including our ODA—official development assistance—spending, it is going to be well over £2 billion every year. There has been no cut in Foreign Office spending whatever; I am afraid that that is absolutely untrue. We are seeing our spending increased rather than the reverse. I have had the opportunity to discuss the crisis in Rakhine and the plight of the Rohingya not just with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for International Development, who was there at the weekend, but with many hon. Friends across the House.

[Dr Allin-Khan]

Will the Foreign Secretary meet me?

[Boris Johnson]

May I invite the hon. Lady to write to me about the matter and I will certainly do my best to give her a full answer? [Interruption.] I am afraid that, as she can imagine, my diary is very heavily congested. [Interruption.] She importunes me for a meeting. It would be wrong of me—[Interruption.]

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Rosena Allin-Khan (Tooting) (Lab)]

Over the past 50 years, the United Kingdom has had a proud history of leading the world in protecting and advancing the cause of humanity. We have vaccinated millions against diseases, given more than 5 million children around the world an education, and fought off fascism on the continent. Our ability to do all that is one of the key reasons that this country has been a beacon for people around the world. There was a time when the Foreign Office exerted a positive influence globally, but I worry that it has now lost its standing on the world stage and that it is afraid to intervene when necessary. What does that tell the world about our poverty of ambition for what the UK can stand for in the future? I worry about what that means for the future generations around the world who will need our Government to step in at times of crisis. I worry about the unnecessary suffering that will go unchallenged, and about the stateless refugees who have fled state-sponsored violence with no hope of returning home. And yes, at this moment, I worry about those Rohingya refugees in border camps who now fear forced repatriation after fleeing persecution and violence.

I recently visited the border of Myanmar and Bangladesh to treat patients in a clinic and hear the testimonies of the Rohingya people, a million of whom have fled torture and persecution in Myanmar. I returned from there last week. When I was there, I met and treated refugees who recounted their harrowing journey and their experiences back in what they had called home. What was most striking was that 80% of those in the camps were women and children. One man recounted a night when the Myanmar army arrived in his village. He described how the entire village of 3,000 people was razed to the ground. All the menfolk were dismembered and murdered, and the women were dragged by their hair and gang raped. Children who were fleeing were dragged back to the village and thrown alive on to burning fires. For the military, age was no barrier. They threw babies on to the fires. I held those charred babies in my arms last week.

I welcome the efforts our Government have made to provide aid and assistance—I really do—but if our efforts are not to be in vain, we need to take firmer action to prevent further atrocities. The extra aid package announced by the International Development Secretary today is a welcome step, but thus far, our action equates to giving a gunshot victim a sticking plaster while allowing the shooter to roam free. The Bangladesh and Myanmar Governments have struck a deal to send the Rohingya back to Myanmar. Our Government must, with international partners, ensure the protection of the Rohingya by preventing forced repatriation, as well as by providing the essentials they need to survive and by guaranteeing their safety if they do go back.

My biggest worry so far is that no external organisations have been allowed access to Rakhine state. The UK must use all its leverage power to get access, and send a ministerial delegation to the region to investigate. As permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, we have the power to act. Our failure to act in the face of genocide goes against everything it means to be British: we must be courageous, compassionate and generous. We have to ask ourselves: will we be on the right side of history? The suffering of the Rohingya people is another opportunity for us to prove that the human capacity for good will always trump that for evil.

The Rohingya and the Myanmar Government

Rosena Allin-Khan Excerpts

Tuesday 17th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Dr Rosena Allin-Khan (Tooting) (Lab)]

I returned from Bangladesh just last week, and I felt moved to speak today. The Rohingya have been forced to choose between the perilous uncertainty of fleeing to another country and the certainty of the violent oppression in their own. The stories of suffering are simply too much to bear. Prior to being in this place, I had a career in the field of humanitarian emergencies, and I have rarely seen anything like this: entire communities fleeing with anything they could grab, only to see all their homes razed to the ground; children burying their younger siblings; multiple accounts of rape and torture; the woman who found her husband dead in her village yet still managed to find the strength over five days to take her three children to Bangladesh; the husband and father who saw his wife and some of his children murdered in front of him but still found the strength to take his remaining children to safety; the two little boys who made it into Bangladesh, despite having had their legs broken; the bravery that is second to none; and, as almost always in conflict, the hundreds—the thousands—of women who have been raped.

Is this ethnic cleansing? Without a doubt. It is a campaign of the most extreme violence, with physical and psychological trauma that will last for generations to come. While it is deeply shocking, it is, sadly, not surprising. We were warned. Three years ago, the group United to End Genocide said:

“Nowhere in the world are there more known precursors to genocide than in Burma today.”

Yet, these things have been allowed to happen. It follows decades of state-supported violent discrimination, social exclusion, and the relentless stoking of racial hatred. The desire to expel the Rohingya from Myanmar has been repeatedly laid bare, as even in the years when the world praised Aung San Suu Kyi’s path to democracy, they were demonised and massacred as “the other”.

I say this to Aung San Suu Kyi: “What we are seeing is not fake news. With its acts of barbaric, unimaginable horror, the campaign of ethnic cleansing taking place in Rakhine province shows the eternal truth that if you cannot see the essential humanity of people because you declare them to be “the other”, you will lose your own humanity.” It is a lesson that this country should learn well. It challenges us to ask, “What does our humanity spur us to do now?” Does it spur us to be brave and to challenge what is happening? Will we act? Will we call this what it is—ethnic cleansing?

The Rohingya desperately need us to step up. They may have escaped the Myanmar army, but they are not yet safe. They are malnourished. They are desperate. Pregnant women are in need of care; children are alone, subject to sexual exploitation. I have worked with, and spoken to on the ground, fantastic organisations such as Christian Aid and Action Aid. They need our help. Bangladesh, which has so bravely and kindly opened its borders, needs our help. We cannot allow the Burmese campaign of ethnic cleansing to succeed by giving up on the future of the people, and of so many children who have been through hell for a chance of survival. I call on the Government to accelerate and increase their support of those organisations and others working to support the Rohingya refugees. At Britain’s best, our humanity does not have borders; it is big enough to stretch overseas. Let it stretch and let us support the Rohingya Muslims who so desperately need our help.

Budget Resolutions

Rosena Allin-Khan Excerpts

Monday 13th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Boris Johnson]

I will conclude with these thoughts.

Last Friday, I was in my constituency of Uxbridge and South Ruislip, and I am proud to say that I visited a business on a backstreet in Uxbridge that has more or less cornered the market in manufacturing the fancy display cabinets used to sell delicacies such as Toblerone in every airport in Saudi Arabia, and it is expanding. Thanks to the ingenuity and enterprise of that business, if we go to a Saudi Arabian airport and buy a Toblerone, we will buy it over a counter made in Uxbridge.

Given the ingenuity that this nation is showing, I believe—

[Dr Rosena Allin-Khan (Tooting) (Lab)]

rose—

[Boris Johnson]

I will not give way.

I believe that we have every reason to be confident in what we can achieve together, as one United Kingdom. This is a nation that in the last 300 years has become prosperous and successful precisely because it adopted a uniquely global outlook—active, engaged, and trading with every corner of the planet—not just for the benefit of the people of this country, but, I dare to say it, for the benefit of the entire world. This is once again the course on which we are now embarked, and this Budget will help us to fulfil our potential as a truly global Britain.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Rosena Allin-Khan (Tooting) (Lab)]

This is my first Budget in the House. I sat here last week with real hope and anticipation, only to be let down, but as I come from the NHS, I am used to being let down by this Conservative Government.

Last Wednesday—International Women’s Day—was the perfect opportunity for the Government to take concerted action to ensure progress towards true equality for women, but they did not deliver. They simply provided cash handouts to keep women quiet. Yes, I welcome the three measures for women announced in the Budget, but £30 million spending in a Budget of more than £800 billion is simply a distraction from the fact that this Budget does very little for women. It does nothing to enhance their lives or living conditions. If anything, it entrenches them further. Why were women only considered in three measures? Why not throughout the entire Budget?

There is an old quote:

“Don’t tell me where your priorities are. Show me where you spend your money and I’ll tell you what they are.”

In the choices we make, we demonstrate what we care about, what we value and what is important to us. It is clear that this Government do not care about or value women, nor deem women important in our society. Throughout this Budget on International Women’s Day, the Chancellor proved himself to have little to no understanding of the struggles facing women today. The Chancellor has proved himself to be so far removed from women who are just about managing, women who are doing all they can to put food on the table, and women who simply wish to contribute to the economy. The Government had the opportunity to take the burden off women’s shoulders, but they did not. The Chancellor refused to ensure that women would receive the same pay as their male counterparts when returning to work after a career break.

I visited Burntwood School in Tooting last week, where more than 200 sixth-form students told me that they were concerned about gender inequality. I apologise to those students and all students in Tooting for this Government’s inaction on ensuring that women are seen and treated as equals. I apologise that this Budget not only lets women down, but ensures that it will take until well after the retirement age of those sixth-formers for the gender pay gap to close.

A Budget is not just numbers. It affects real people, real lives and real families. However, that seems to be something that the Chancellor so easily forgets. Food bank usage is soaring. I see families week in, week out in my constituency surgeries who simply cannot cope, who get halfway through the month and are unsure how they are going to provide food for their children. We on the Opposition Benches have a responsibility to protect this country’s citizens. Forcing women to prove that their third, fourth or fifth child is a product of rape in order to be eligible for further child tax credit and universal credit is simply moving the burden of spending away from one area on to another. The Treasury has chosen to make a series of tax cuts that will actually cost £41 billion a year by 2020—more than the £37 billion saved from social security cuts.

Fundamentally, on a day to celebrate women—all they do and the potential they have—the Chancellor chose to segregate them further in society, and to silence them with cash handouts that will not even touch the sides of improving their day-to-day lives. If it is true that how someone spends their money shows us what they care about, we can only conclude that this Government do not care about true equality for women. This Conservative Government love to focus on having two female Prime Ministers, but it is a Labour Government who will congratulate themselves on how they treat 32.5 million women in the UK. Whatever headlines the Government try to spin, whatever jokes the Chancellor has tried to make and whatever cash handouts they provide—

[Mr Speaker]

Order.

[Dr Allin-Khan]

The fine print tells us—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. A Member must not continue when told to sit down, otherwise we will have anarchy in this place. It is not acceptable; it just must not happen. I call Rachael Maskell.

Aleppo/Syria: International Action

Rosena Allin-Khan Excerpts

Programme motion: House of Commons
Tuesday 13th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Dr Rosena Allin-Khan (Tooting) (Lab)]

As I stand here speaking to the House, I feel humbled but wracked with guilt: guilt that tonight I get to go home and kiss my children, while Syrian parents are burying theirs; and guilt that I am not on the front line with my medical colleagues from the Red Cross, whom I stood with for many years, shoulder to shoulder, in many a humanitarian crisis. Those colleagues are pulling bodies out of wreckage, at certain risk of murder. They are desperately fighting to save lives, without resources, using rags to stop bleeding and with eyes streaming from chlorine gas. I have guilt when I ask myself whether in Britain we on these Benches have done enough for the innocent people of Syria and I cannot put my hand on my heart and say that we have.

My guilt is tempered only by the hope that today my voice, along with those of colleagues from both sides of the House, may be heard and action will be taken. I have said it before and I will say it again: the sound of a parent losing a child is an international language. It penetrates one’s skull—it is a dagger through the heart—but it is a language that we are not hearing here in this Chamber. Why have we not heard it? Why do we sit here with inaction? We are close to a time when all we will be able to say is, “It’s too late.” But we stand here today with a last chance for the Government to be able to say, “We did something.” Something is better than nothing—to date, all we have is nothing.

[Craig Whittaker (Calder Valley) (Con)]

I was in the House in 2013, when we voted in this House to do nothing. At that time, 2 million women and children were in camps, 5 million Syrians were displaced within Syria and Assad had slaughtered 150,000 of his own people. If we as a nation will not take action, the UN will not take action and all the most powerful nations in the world will not take action, what hope did those people have and what hope do they have today?

[Dr Allin-Khan]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his point. With the greatest of respect, let me say that I was not in the Chamber at that time and I am talking about what we can do now and the responsibility that we have to humanity here today. Many of us, from both sides of the House, have called again and again for humanitarian aid drops and been met with, “Air drops are a last resort”. The time for last resort has come and gone. I am calling today for a strategy from the Government on how they will protect the civilians left trapped in Aleppo, many of whom know their fate and many of whom have been begging their loved ones to kill them because they fear what will happen to them if they are captured. Today is the day when we need action. We need negotiations now for provision to be put in place for those in Aleppo to leave and get to a safe haven. That city was once thriving, just like our own, but it has been reduced to rubble and death. The only thing that separates them from us is where they were born. What makes their lives worth less than ours? What makes their children’s lives worth less than ours? We will be worth less if we just stand by. One question we need to ask ourselves is: in the twilight of our own lives, will we be able to look at ourselves in the mirror, in the privacy of our own minds, and know we really did all we could? Our choice is simple: will we be governed by fear or will we be led by our conscience?

Yemen

Rosena Allin-Khan Excerpts

Monday 12th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Ellwood]

We need a collective approach to ensure that stakeholders are supported in coming to the table to discuss not only Yemen but stabilisation, which applies to Iraq, Yemen and Syria. That is where the Gulf nations have a responsibility not only to support legitimate governance, but to take an interest in and commit to stabilisation, post-conflict planning and peacekeeping resolutions after the guns fall silent.

[Dr Rosena Allin-Khan (Tooting) (Lab)]

The first 1,000 days of a child’s life are vital in their lifelong development. Not only are Yemeni children’s basic human rights not being met now in this awful conflict, but they will not have a chance even when the conflict ends. What are the Government doing to ensure that Yemeni children have access to vital nutritious food for the duration of the conflict?

[Mr Ellwood]

The hon. Lady is right; the travesty is that the length of this conflict is denying a generation, in terms not only of health but education. This is the generation that needs to rebuild the country in the longer term, which is why, as the Minister of State, Department for International Development, my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart), has confirmed, we are working with UNICEF specifically to make sure that we can provide the necessary nutritional meals to support those infants in the important years in the first 1,000 days of their lives.