Syria: Refugees and Counter-terrorism
Jack Dromey Excerpts(8 years, 8 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend makes a good point. It is a difficult balance to explain the information we have without endangering national security or operations that may be under way. All I would say is that we will always try to provide the best and most up-to-date intelligence information in a format that people can find reliable, but, as Prime Ministers have found before, this is very, very difficult water to go through.
Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)
Our country has a long and honourable tradition of providing asylum and we warmly welcome those who will come to our shores—to Birmingham as they did to Berlin. Leadership is key at this time of the greatest refugee crisis since the war, and so, too, is the tone that that leadership sets. Will the Prime Minister therefore assure the House that there will be no more talk of swarms of marauding migrants, when there are hundreds of thousands of people fleeing for their lives?
The Prime Minister
I think what matters is the action we take to demonstrate the humanity and moral conscience of Britain. That is what we are doing today.
Oral Answers to Questions
Jack Dromey Excerpts(9 years, 1 month ago)
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The Prime Minister
I can reassure my hon. Friend. For me, Trident and its replacement are non-negotiable. They are an absolutely vital part of this nation’s security. Let me just remind Labour Members of the leaflet going out across Scotland. It says this:
“At the General Election we need to stop the Tories being the largest party.”
They have given up trying to be the Government and trying to win a majority. They want to crawl into Downing street on the coat tails of the SNP and put our country at risk. The British people will never have it.
Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)
Seventeen thousand police officers have gone in this Parliament. Under the Chancellor’s spending plans, another 30,000 would go in the next Parliament. The outgoing president of the Association of Chief Police Officers, Sir Hugh Orde, has warned that it would no longer be possible adequately to protect the public from criminals or from the growing threat of home-grown terrorists. Is he right?
The Prime Minister
What we have seen in this Parliament is that, yes, we have made difficult decisions on police spending, but crime is down, including crime in the west midlands.
As for the shadow Chancellor’s dossier this week, he briefed against it before we even had a chance. I have heard of him briefing against the leader, but he has beaten his own records. He now briefs against himself.
Oral Answers to Questions
Jack Dromey Excerpts(9 years, 4 months ago)
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The Deputy Prime Minister
Well, it is not my problem if local Labour council leaders have not consulted people locally—they made this decision. As she will know, shortly afterwards, on the other side of the Pennines, we entered into a very ambitious deal devolving new powers to Sheffield, without following the metro mayor model entered into by council leaders in her area.
Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)
2. What steps he is taking to ensure that the residents of Birmingham benefit from the Government's political and constitutional reform proposals.
The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Greg Clark)
A happy new year to you Mr Speaker and to colleagues.
As the hon. Gentleman knows, I have led the negotiations for a city deal and a local growth deal with Birmingham. The city deal has already delivered almost 3,000 apprenticeships in the city and established the Institute of Translational Medicine, which opens in the summer. The growth deal invests a third of a billion pounds in road, rail and metro improvements, including links from the black country to the new HS2 station, as well as investing in skills and industrial facilities.
Jack Dromey
England cannot succeed through London and the south-east alone. A new devolution settlement is essential. The Minister will know that Birmingham and the west midlands are ambitious to make progress, but does he understand the sense of disappointment that progress thus far has not been what was hoped for and, crucially, that, at the very moment we are talking about greater control over our finances, the Government are cutting in excess of half a billion pounds—the biggest cuts in local government history—from Birmingham city council?
Greg Clark
The leader of Birmingham city council warmly welcomed the growth deal and said that it was a great step forward for Birmingham. The city deals have been welcomed by leaders across the political spectrum and across the country as far more ambitious than anything that has been done for decades. Of course every council across the country needs to make savings. I understand from what the Opposition were saying yesterday that they would go further than that. The hon. Gentleman should be clear that Birmingham is on the rise. The economic prospects and the performance of Birmingham have turned around. In the previous Parliament, the number of net private sector jobs contracted; it is now increasing in Birmingham. That is good news.
Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)
T4. From Lincolnshire to London, chief constables are expressing mounting concern over the Government’s proposed cuts to policing leading to neighbourhood policing being hollowed out, response times getting longer, victims being let down and, crucially, public safety being put at risk. Are they right?
The Deputy Prime Minister
Of course, the police have had to absorb 20% reductions in their budget and it is extraordinary—we should all pay tribute to police forces up and down the country for this—that they have none the less equally presided over a decline in crime rates to historically very low levels indeed. I am extremely confused this morning—[Interruption.] Let me explain, and the confusion will then be on the other side of the House, not on this side. The Labour party has vilified the coalition Government, day in, day out, for taking difficult decisions to balance the books, but I read this morning that it would actually inflict more cuts on local government and would not relieve the public sector pay restraint on millions of people in the public sector. I would be interested to know what Labour’s solution really is. It criticises us for things it now apparently wants to do itself.
Oral Answers to Questions
Jack Dromey Excerpts(9 years, 5 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
The remarkable thing about that award is that Tony Blair got it from someone who used to work for Gordon Brown. Obviously the person who gave the award knows about peacemaking and peacekeeping, but it is not for me to get involved.
Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)
In 2010, the Prime Minister promised to protect the front line, yet with the biggest police cuts in Europe, our police service is facing the loss of 30,000 officers—more than half of them from the front line—which is threatening, in the words of the Association of Chief Police Officers, their ability to perform their statutory functions and protect the vulnerable. Does the Prime Minister understand the concern that is being expressed in communities all over the country at his Government’s systematic undermining of the bedrock of policing: local policing and neighbourhood policing?
The Prime Minister
I do not accept what the hon. Gentleman says. We have made difficult decisions about police budgets. We had to cut those budgets by 20%, but at the same time as doing that we have seen that crime has actually fallen in this country, whether measured by the national crime survey or the figures reported to the police. On both counts, crime has come down. The other thing that has happened is that because the police have done such a magnificent job of reform and improving efficiency, the percentage of officers on the front line has actually gone up.
Iraq: Coalition Against ISIL
Jack Dromey Excerpts(9 years, 7 months ago)
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Richard Burden (Birmingham, Northfield) (Lab)
I am grateful—[Laughter.] We are both from Birmingham; we get everywhere.
I am grateful to the Prime Minister for giving way. Whether or not we are militarily involved in Syria, there is no doubt that the fighting in Syria has been and is intensifying, which means that the humanitarian crisis that has already been unfolding in Syria will also intensify. For example, there have been more than 650 major impact strikes on Aleppo since February. This will require new ways of getting humanitarian aid in. What preparations are being made for that, because the current arrangements need to be stepped up, and who are the Prime Minister and the international community co-operating with to ensure that that aid gets in?
Alistair Burt
I entirely agree. ISIL’s barbarity is what has brought us here today, as well as the recognition that something longer-term is needed beyond force.
That brings me to my second point. In the past few weeks, I have travelled to both Tunisia and the United Arab Emirates. None of us should underestimate the importance of those Islamic states’ having joined against this terrorist criminal group. That is a big thing. As the hon. Member for Bradford West (George Galloway) observed, none of it is simple. The fact that some, in the past, supported what became this terrorist group because they felt that they were standing up against Sunni oppression was a very big thing, and the fact that states and theological leaders are now denouncing it marks a profound shift in opinion. It is a big thing to be able to attack those who are attacking one’s enemies. That shift has been profoundly important, and none of us here should minimise it.
Relationships in the area are complex. Not all Islamist groups are enemy groups. Some leaders in some states go easy on some groups, but are now beginning to make a clear distinction, recognising that groups which label themselves in a particular way, professing to stand up for Sunnis who are being oppressed, are not always what they seem. That is a profound change, which—as my hon. Friend the Member for Gravesham (Mr Holloway) said earlier—enables this alliance to be led not by the west, but by the thought leaders of the middle east. It marks a turning point in the way in which this matter should be handled in the future.
Jack Dromey
The right hon. Gentleman is making a typically thoughtful speech. It would be unthinkable to stand back and repeat the mistakes of history—the slaughters of Srebrenica and Rwanda, for instance, through barbarism—but the right hon. Gentleman is right to point out that it would also be unthinkable to fail to learn the lessons of history. Evil thrives on a sense of grievance.
Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that, on the one hand, it is of the highest importance for us to work with and support progressive elements in the Muslim community nationally and internationally and resist the demonisation of the Muslim community, and that, on the other hand, a regional political settlement must include a two-state solution?
Alistair Burt
I shall not respond to the hon. Gentleman’s second point. There is an issue relating to the settling of wider grievances, and that is one of the layers of the complexity to which I referred earlier. However, his first point was absolutely right. The unequivocal response of the Islamic community in the United Kingdom to what we have seen in recent months has also been one of the most profound developments. As the hon. Gentleman said, there should be no demonisation of the Muslim community in the United Kingdom, because its response has been very dramatic and very strong, and must be used to bring to the young people who have been corrupted by this false ideology a sense that their Muslim faith should take them in a different direction.
The last point that I want to make concerns Syria. I entirely agree with colleagues who have raised it as the issue that might have been discussed today. We know that it is there, because there are no borders between Iraq and Syria, and indeed there are no borders when it comes to dealing with the issue, which will be dealt with in Syria sooner or later. However, there are some misunderstandings about how the situation in Syria has arisen, and about the relationship between President Assad and the extremists.
President Assad’s fight is with his people who rose up against him, who are represented by those who supported the protesters, and who have been recognised by more than 100 states, the Syrian National Coalition and the Free Syrian Army. The enemies of those people are not just Assad, but the terrorist criminal forces that have come in. Assad has been in league with those forces, because his greatest fear is his people, not the extremists. Had we taken action against Assad last year, that action would have demonstrated that the rest of the world was prepared to stand up against him, and—as he realised—would have provided an opportunity to bring him to negotiations.
Assad will not negotiate for the peace of Syria until he is forced to do so, which is why we should seek to support those who have been fighting the terrorists and criminals on the ground. That means the peshmerga and the Iraqi army—although the vulnerabilities of the Iraqi army are well known, and they cannot be relied on for some time to come—but it also means the Free Syrian army, which exists and is not a fiction. It has fought both Assad and the terrorists for the past year in Aleppo, and it should be supported. We now know that we cannot do the ground work, which must be taken on by people in the region, so we should support those who are doing it. The United States has moved from covert to overt support, and we should be trying to do the same.
If there is to be an overall settlement, underlying grievances will need to be tackled, but the key to such a settlement is an end to intolerance in the region, notably religious intolerance between sects and against the Christian community. Intolerance runs through the region as if though a stick of rock, and the damage that it does is now being seen in the intolerance of the terrorist and the criminal.
Ukraine (Flight MH17) and Gaza
Jack Dromey Excerpts(9 years, 9 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend makes a very important point, which is that the resolution will go to a vote at, I think, 8 pm UK time. We have drafted it in such a way as to try to prevent the Russians from having any sort of excuse about obfuscation or lack of clarity. We are not being particularly precious about who exactly leads the investigation. We are happy for it to be done by international experts with the backing of ICAO—the International Civil Aviation Organisation—which is an international body, so there is no excuse for a Russian veto. The whole world will be watching very closely, and if there is one, obviously there will be very bad consequences.
Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)
Israel has a right to security, with an end to rocket attacks by Hamas, but does the Prime Minister agree that while Israel uses overwhelming and disproportionate force with heartbreaking consequences in Gaza and continues to build settlements in the west bank, there will not be peace and security until such time as it recognises the right of the Palestinians to live in security as well and agrees to a two-state solution?
The Prime Minister
We want to see a two-state solution and there are many in Israel who accept a two-state solution, but at the moment the people who are preventing a two-state solution from even being on the table are Hamas, through its actions.
European Council
Jack Dromey Excerpts(9 years, 10 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend is ingenious in seeing a silver lining in every cloud. I had not got him down as one of nature’s out-and-out optimists, but I will have to reassess that judgment. We will now have to deal openly and frankly with the new Commission president if he is endorsed by the European Parliament. He did say in his manifesto—although he was not standing specifically in Britain, as it were—that we have to address the issues of reform that Britain has put on the table, and we now need to make sure that we hold him to that.
Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)
The automotive industry in Britain is a world-class success story. Key to that success is inward investment. Key to inward investment is continuing membership of the European Union. Does the Prime Minister not recognise the damage that he is doing to the jewel in the crown of British manufacturing and the British national interest through the ever-greater uncertainty he is creating over membership of the European Union as he takes us towards the exit?
The Prime Minister
I do not accept what the hon. Gentleman says. Over the past four years, we have seen an absolute transformation in the fortunes of the British automotive industry. We see that in Jaguar Land Rover and in Nissan. These companies are choosing to invest and they are doing so after I made the Bloomberg speech, because they can see there is a British Prime Minister and a British Government who are fighting for a better deal in Europe.
Tributes to Nelson Mandela
Jack Dromey Excerpts(10 years, 5 months ago)
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Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)
Three brief stories, of Kilburn, Kingstanding and Luanda, are linked together by the enduring icon who is Nelson Mandela.
I was born in Kilburn, of Irish immigrant parents. Twenty-five years later, the Jamaicans arrived. Both groups met waves of prejudice. My father, seeking lodgings, was told, “No Irish. No dogs.” Twenty-five years later, the Jamaicans were told, “No blacks. No dogs.” Both communities became the bedrock in north-west London of a vibrant, diverse, thriving multicultural society. People from both communities were present in 1962 at Nelson Mandela’s final meeting in this country before he went back to South Africa and ultimately stood trial for his life. He addressed the Willesden Friendship League in Kilburn high road, but hundreds of yards from where I was born. He enraptured the audience that night, and I will never forget old Tom Durkin, the president of Brent Trades Council, saying, “I have never met a man so optimistic in all my life.”
Both communities then became the bedrock of the Anti-Apartheid Movement. We look back now at that era and see that it was tough. It was tough for black people, including in the world of work, above all in South Africa, but also in this country. All too often, workplaces were scarred by racism, which was compounded and encouraged by the naked oppression of black people in South Africa. I recall one black Transport and General Workers Union shop steward, George, in an Irish pub in Kilburn high road, telling me the story of how grievously he felt having been racially abused in his workplace. But, he said, “I will stand up against it.” Who was his hero? It was Nelson Mandela.
Throughout those bitter years of the Anti-Apartheid Movement, many of us often stood on freezing pavements outside South Africa house or outside supermarkets trying to encourage people not to buy South African produce. During that time, a second battle was being fought against colonialism and racism in the Portuguese colonial empire—Mozambique, Angola, Guinea-Bissau and the Cape Verde Islands. I was deeply involved in that campaign. When Franco died and then Salazar the year after, after 20 years of a liberation struggle the Portuguese colonial empire collapsed. There was a process of rapid decolonisation. In Angola, oil and diamond-rich, the South Africans invaded from the south and the Zairians invaded from the north, and it was only the Cubans coming in to fight with the MPLA that prevented South Africa from taking over Angola.
Stephen Sedley, who retired but two years ago as a Lord Justice of Appeal, and I were invited out there as friends of the liberation movement to serve on the commission that observed the mercenary trials— 13 mercenaries were captured at the end of the Angolan war. I will tell but one story from that experience. I recall one night walking with Stephen and some of the other commission members down the bay of Luanda. On the beach, the black soldiers from FAPLA, the armed wing of the MPLA, and the black Cuban soldiers were boogying around a camp fire. We got to talk, and one Cuban, who spoke very good English, said, “For us, it is back to Africa. For us, it is about the memory of Lumumba, Mondlane and the great figures of the liberation movement who were killed by apartheid and racism.” But he also said, “It is Angola today, it is South Africa tomorrow. One day Nelson Mandela will be free.”
My third, more recent story is from two months ago. I opened the new North Birmingham academy in Kingstanding. That community was once scarred by racism. I spoke to two young black pupils, one from a West Indian background and one from an African background, who were discussing the experiences that one of them and some members of their family had had. They called those who had abused them on one occasion “little people”. One of the guys said, “I am proud to be black.” We then got into a discussion, and I found out that his hero was Nelson Mandela. Worldwide polls were conducted on five continents at the beginning of the millennium asking who was the greatest statesman of the 20th century. It is little wonder that every one of them said it was Nelson Mandela.
I wish to say two things in conclusion. First, I wish to pay tribute to all the veterans from the bitter wilderness years, above all in South Africa: Neil and Glenys Kinnock; Bob Hughes; Richard Caborn; my right hon. Friend the Member for Neath (Mr Hain); and a man I knew very well, a good personal friend who tragically died young, Mike Terry, the secretary of the Anti-Apartheid Movement.
Secondly, what is so remarkable about Nelson Mandela is the sheer triumph of the human spirit. This is a man who endured the unendurable, who saw some of his comrades taken out and hung. This is a man who was oppressed but ultimately broke the will of his oppressors. This is a man who was jailed for three decades and then came out and forgave his jailers, in the most remarkable act of national reconciliation, avoiding what could otherwise have been the most immense conflagration in southern Africa. He was truly the global giant of his century. We mourn his loss. Our world is a better world for Nelson Mandela. But we not only mourn; we remember that infectious smile, infectious optimism and infectious enthusiasm, and we smile at the memory of Nelson Mandela.
Oral Answers to Questions
Jack Dromey Excerpts(11 years, 2 months ago)
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The Solicitor-General
My hon. Friend has made a distinguished contribution to the all-party group that deals with this issue. He is absolutely right that we need to focus on this both at home and overseas, and that is what the National Crime Agency will be very well able to do.
Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)
2. What estimate he has made of the likely saving the Crown Prosecution Service will make by introducing proportionality into the public interest test of the Crown prosecutors’ code.
The Solicitor-General (Oliver Heald)
The answer is none, as this is not about making savings from the Crown Prosecution Service budget.
Jack Dromey
If the Crown Prosecution Service is to make decisions not to proceed with a prosecution on the grounds of cost or because of concerns about the health of a victim, is it not then right that a proper record is kept of how many and why, so that victims, the public and Parliament can hold both the Crown Prosecution Service and Ministers properly to account?
The Solicitor-General
First, it is important that proportionality has been reintroduced to the Code for Crown Prosecutors. We have all seen examples of the schoolyard scuffle or other matters that should not be prosecuted, and where it is important to achieve a balance. On recording, the CPS keeps a considerable amount of records. Of course, that costs money and so there is a balance to be struck, but I will certainly think over the hon. Gentleman’s point.
Oral Answers to Questions
Jack Dromey Excerpts(11 years, 4 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend makes an important point. Some people in the House might have missed this. In a recent health debate, my right hon. Friend the Health Secretary asked the shadow Health Secretary:
“does he stand by his comment that it is irresponsible to increase NHS spending?”—[Official Report, 12 December 2012; Vol. 555, c. 332.]
What did the shadow Health Secretary reply? He said, “Yes, I do.” It may be Christmas time, but the shadow Health Secretary is the gift that keeps on giving.
Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)
Last week, 100 young homeless people came to this House for the first ever young homeless people’s parliament. I am grateful to you, Mr Speaker, for being present, to the House authorities for their support, and to the Ministers who came to engage with those young people. They were excellent young people who gave powerful, personal testimony about why they had become homeless. They set out in no uncertain terms what they expect from us in this House. Above all, they want their voice to be heard. They agreed that they would seek a meeting with the Prime Minister. Will he receive a delegation of those young, homeless people?
The Prime Minister
I join the hon. Gentleman in welcoming the fact that those young people came to Parliament to make those points, and I will listen carefully to what they have to say. The truth is that in our country we have seen housing benefit increase by something like 50% over recent years, and even under our plans it will continue to increase. What we in Britain need to do is build more homes in the private sector and the social rented sector. That is the vital task ahead of us, and I give credit to planning Ministers and others who will help to make that happen.