Syria

Debate between Lucy Powell and Alison McGovern

Monday 16th April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the current situation in Syria and the UK Government’s approach.

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for granting this debate.

On the morning of 14 April, British and allied forces conducted strikes on Syrian installations involved in the Assad regime’s illegal use of chemical weapons against its own people. The strike was launched as a response to the Syrian regime’s latest chemical weapons attack on 7 April in Douma, as I mentioned a moment ago, which killed up to 75 people, including young children.

I want to begin by quoting a Syrian, Bilal Shami from Rethink Rebuild Society, which is a Syria-led organisation that I have visited in Manchester. Bilal said:

“The UK’s latest reactionary military response seems to be detached from a wider comprehensive strategy that helps end this devastating seven-year conflict.”

It is that wider strategy that I want the House now to turn to.

[Lucy Powell (Manchester Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

I thank my hon. Friend for making a very powerful case for this debate today. This week I have had several emails from Rethink Rebuild Society, which is based in Manchester, imploring Britain now to redouble its efforts to put civilians at the heart of its strategy and to make sure that the abhorrent actions of Assad that we saw a few days ago can never reoccur. I just wanted my hon. Friend to know that.

[Alison McGovern]

I thank my hon. Friend, and, through her, all those in the Syrian community in Manchester and in the UK beyond for the assistance they have given me in working on Syria.

We know that we cannot continue to allow the erosion of international laws that prohibit the use of chemical weapons. I explained earlier our country’s historical role in containing the use of chemical weapons—and we ought not to forget our own experience. But I do not wish to constrain our discussion today merely to chemical weapons, because, vile though they are, they are not the only means of savage killing that has taken place.

Let me remind the House that the conflict in Syria began when Assad’s forces opened fire on protesters demanding the release of political prisoners. They were not violent anarchists or subversives with questionable ties to foreign Governments, but a 13-year-old boy, his cousin and a dozen of their friends who had sprayed graffiti on a wall calling for Assad to step down. With the Syrian civil war now in its eighth year, the lack of a strategy from our Government beyond hoping that things will improve is leading only to more suffering. More than half a million Syrians have died, 6 million are internally displaced, and 5 million are refugees.

Today I call, as my colleague Jo Cox called, for a comprehensive strategy to protect civilian life. The Assad Government continue to commit violations of international humanitarian law on an almost daily basis. Let us take, for example, his barrel bombs: the brute force of dirty explosives booted off the back of a helicopter, heedless of who might be beneath. The deliberate targeting of civilians is illegal in any case, but what makes this worse is Assad’s continual terrorising of the civilian population without consequence.

That is not all. Siege warfare has returned in Syria. That is also illegal, but despite the best efforts of the International Committee of the Red Cross, Red Crescent and other humanitarians, Assad simply will not comply with the right to food, the right to medical care, or the right not just to live but to exist in any normal understanding of the word.

Schools White Paper

Debate between Lucy Powell and Alison McGovern

Wednesday 13th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[Lucy Powell]

I am going to make some progress.

Although the Sutton Trust found excellence in a small number of academy chains, it found that the majority were underperforming. Not only is the forced academisation programme evidently not about school improvement, but the Government’s drive on it may greatly diminish what capacity there is in the system for school improvement. The regional schools commissioners, their officials, the energies of school leaders and local authorities will now, as we are already seeing, shift almost entirely away from schools that need improvement towards creating trusts and changing the legal status of a huge number of schools, most of which are already performing well. Indeed, the national schools commissioner and the Department for Education have not even acquired the powers they sought from Parliament in the Education and Adoption Act 2016—they will get them on Monday —to put more schools they deem to be coasting into academy chains. Was that piece of legislation therefore a complete waste of time?

[Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is talking about coasting schools. In the NHS, which had a huge reorganisation that nobody voted for, performance absolutely went down while people had to deal with that big reorganisation. Is she worried, as I am, that this is heading in the same direction? If there is a big reorganisation that nobody has voted for, performance in our schools and the achievement of our children will fall away.

[Lucy Powell]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. The Government, as they have no other ideas, seem to enjoy such reorganisations.

I will shortly return to some of the very real concerns about the performance of academy chains, but I first want to look at another of the Government’s arguments for forced academisation, which is that it is about autonomy and freedoms. This Government say they are for choice in education. Choice? What choice is there in a one-size-fits-all policy? What is autonomous about forcing a high-performing school into an academy chain? Will the Secretary of State promise that every outstanding school leader who wants their school to remain as it is can do so? No, she cannot. Where is the autonomy for the small village school, which the White Paper makes clear cannot be a stand-alone academy? I see some nods from Conservative Members to these points. Perhaps this is why even one of the Secretary of State’s main allies, Toby Young, has described this policy as Stalinist. The curriculum and other freedoms described by the Government could easily be given to all schools without the need for a change to legal status.