Syria: Refugees and Counter-terrorism

Boris Johnson Excerpts

Monday 7th September 2015 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right about Europol, and we are putting in investment and working very closely with it. We are also putting National Crime Agency officials into the operations in Sicily and elsewhere to break up the criminal gangs. I would be very cautious, however, about his suggestion about Calais. Anything that suggests that Calais will become a processing centre for people to come to the United Kingdom would simply make the situation there worse. We need to explain to people that coming to Calais and trying to get through the tunnel is not the way to get to the United Kingdom. That is what all the security and the defences are about, and we should keep them up.

[Boris Johnson (Uxbridge and South Ruislip) (Con)]

Having seen at first hand the work of DFID officials helping refugees from Daesh in their camps, can the Prime Minister confirm that there will be no reduction in that effort now that we are welcoming more to this country with DFID funds? I am sure that that was the implication of what my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) said. I think the whole House will agree that we should all be proud of what those officials are doing and have been doing over many years.

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We will continue to invest in these refugee camps; £1 billion has gone in already and we will keep up that investment. Taking people from the camps is the right answer for Britain and the right answer for those people, and of course we will release some of the capacity of those camps, because at the moment they are under huge amounts of pressure, not just budgetary pressure but people pressure as well.