EU-Turkey Agreement Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office
David T C Davies
Main Page: David T C Davies (Conservative - Monmouth)Department Debates - View all David T C Davies's debates with the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office
(8 years, 2 months ago)
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Mr Lidington
No, no. I am afraid I must urge my hon. Friend to intensify his study of the European treaties and, particularly, the European directives. The treaties make it quite clear that each and every aspect of an accession negotiation, including arrangements for controls on migration, must be agreed unanimously. Every member state, including the United Kingdom, has a veto on every aspect of an accession negotiation. He is making a mistake in imagining that things will happen in the way he describes.
David T. C. Davies (Monmouth) (Con)
Will the Minister confirm that the majority of those coming into Europe from Turkey are men, and that the majority of them are coming from countries other than Syria that have a very poor human rights record in regard to women? How can we be certain that the mass migration into Europe will not have an impact on women’s rights, which have been hard fought for on this continent?
Mr Lidington
We have a genuine humanitarian crisis in Syria that has displaced about 11 million people, either within Syria or to neighbouring countries. That is now being exploited by people traffickers—on that point, my hon. Friend is correct. They are trying to encourage people of other nationalities to come in and claim refugee status on the back of genuine refugee claims and genuine refugee need. That reinforces the importance of having a robust system of processing individual claims, so that we can distinguish between people who have a well-founded fear of persecution and those who are trying to move for economic reasons. The reason that the United Kingdom is giving help to Frontex and the European Asylum Support Office is precisely to strengthen the capacity of the Greek system in particular to carry out those processes and to distinguish between genuine refugees and those who are trying to move for other reasons.