War in Yemen: First Anniversary

Debate between Peter Grant and Alison Thewliss

Tuesday 22nd March 2016 Westminster Hall

[Peter Grant]

I am grateful for that intervention, and I agree entirely. I do not remember the exact figures— I have them somewhere—but I can say that UK emergency aid to Yemen is measured in the tens of millions, whereas UK arms sales to Saudi Arabia are measured in thousands of millions. The disparity is stark.

I come to the question of arms sales. The Government have previously defended them, essentially by saying, “We can’t find any evidence that weapons from British sources have been used actively in this oppression and in killing civilians,” but that is not good enough. The United Nations panel of experts has identified 119 cases in which Saudi-led coalition forces have undertaken military action in breach of international humanitarian law, either because they have deliberately targeted civilian targets or because they knew that by attacking military targets, there was a significant risk that civilian targets would be affected. That is why we are seeing schools, hospitals, roads, railways and mosques—the very fabric of society in Yemen—being destroyed.

[Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)]

My good friend mentions hospitals in Yemen. Does he share my horror that Médecins sans Frontières hospitals in Yemen have been hit by projectiles and missiles, and that even ambulances have been hit as part of the conflict, putting at risk medical staff and the people they are desperately trying to help?

[Peter Grant]

Again, that is a very valid point. It seems to me that whereas Governments the world over—if they are doing anything—are siding with the Saudi-led coalition, the only people who are really putting themselves out to help those in the most need of it are organisations such as Médecins sans Frontières, Save the Children and other non-governmental organisations. Many of them put their staff and volunteers at enormous risk and many of them, including Médecins sans Frontières, have seen colleagues lose their lives in air strikes, which I do not think can credibly be laid at the door of anyone other than the Saudi-led coalition.

I draw Members’ attention to an answer given on 10 March to a written question from the right hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake), who is one of a number of Members who have pressed the Government on aspects of the conflict. He asked specifically what the response of the Government of Saudi Arabia was to the representations that had been made about the attack on the hospital and about a number of other reports of attacks on civilians and breaches of human rights. As is so often the case, the Government provided a reply but not an answer; they gave no indication that they had had any response at all. I ask the Minister today: in response to United Kingdom representations, have we yet had a substantive answer from the Saudis explaining specifically the destruction of the Médecins sans Frontières hospital?

My view is that it is not enough to say that we cannot find proof that the Saudis have done this deliberately, or even that the Saudis have done this at all. It is not enough to say that we cannot find substantive proof that weapons or weapons components—some of which are manufactured by Raytheon in my constituency, incidentally—have been used. By this time, there should be conclusive evidence that they have not been used. The UK Government’s position appears to be, “We are not going to investigate it particularly carefully; it is up to the Saudis to investigate what their military forces are doing.” What kind of system of international justice would we have if an accusation of mass murder was investigated only by the accused person?

European Agenda on Migration

Debate between Peter Grant and Alison Thewliss

Monday 14th December 2015 Commons Chamber

[Peter Grant]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for those comments and I fully agree with them. I had wanted to say more in response to what the hon. Member for North East Somerset said, but as he is not here I will not respond to him just now. There may be people taking risks that could be described as foolish, but they are not foolish risks—they are desperate risks. These people are not stupid. Some of them are very highly educated, highly skilled workers in their homeland, and the reason they are risking their lives and, even more remarkably, those of their nearest and dearest, including their own children, is because they have taken a calculated risk that leaving them behind in Syria puts their lives at even greater risk.

[Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that part of the problem is that there is no means of safe passage across land once borders have been closed, which means that there is no option for many people but to go by sea?

[Peter Grant]

Absolutely. One thing that drives people into the unseaworthy boats of the criminals is that they have no other way of getting out. If the only way they can get out is by risking their lives with the smugglers, that is what they will do. Sadly, all too often the evidence is washed up on the beaches of Europe and north Africa.

Does the Minister accept that the root cause of this emergency is not the benefit system or the wonderful economic growth that is happening in Britain, but the desperate, desperate tragedy that is unfolding in Syria and some of its neighbouring countries? That is the situation that must be addressed once and for all if we want this emergency to be resolved, even in the longer term.

The hon. Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) mentioned the £3 billion of aid that is going to Turkey. We want to know what transparency and accountability is attached to that money. How do we know that it will be used for the correct purposes? I am not as enthusiastic a friend of the Turkish Government as some of those on the Government Benches. I cannot forget what the Turkish military are doing to the Kurdish people right now, and until they stop, there must be a limit to how willing we are to accept them as fully fledged respecters of human rights and of the rule of international law.

In the letter received by the Chair of the European Scrutiny Committee on 11 December, the Minister addressed this question of how the UK will respond to specific calls for assistance under the EU civil protection mechanism. In his final comment he said that he believed that there was more that other member states could do to support all this work and the various funding strands among the UK’s contribution. It made me remember a story that used to be popular a few years ago in certain management circles about the four workers called Anybody, Somebody, Nobody and Everybody. There were various versions of the story, but the nub of it was that there was always a vital job that had to be done. Everybody agreed that Somebody had to do it, and Anybody could have done it, but Nobody actually did. I just wondered whether what the Minister was saying was that they all agree that everybody else should do a lot more, but they cannot agree on who that is. Perhaps the Minister, either here in the Chamber or in the Scrutiny Committee, will clarify and amplify his comments. Which specific member states should be doing more? What more is it realistic for them to do? What are they doing already? We cannot judge whether other member states should do more unless we have an indication of what they are already doing.

One part of the Government’s motion gives me a great deal of concern. It talks about the need

“to break the link between rescue at sea and permanent settlement in the EU.”

I did not realise that there was an automatic permanent link of that kind. If somebody is rescued from the sea, they are almost by definition a refugee. They are claiming asylum. We have to assess whether they are entitled to asylum. If they are here solely as an asylum seeker, they do not have an automatic right to live here forever. In theory, they can be asked to go home when it is safe to do so. I just wonder whether we are seeing yet another acceptance by the Government that the emergency situation in Syria will continue for years and years. People have come here because they want a safe haven for a few years before they go home. Are we accepting that it will be years, possibly decades, before Syria is fit to take them back? I will look for clarification from the Minister on that—not necessarily this evening, but hopefully in the near future. I hope that we do not have to wait as long as the Chairman of the European Scrutiny Committee has had to wait for some of his answers.

At one point, we considered pushing this matter to a vote simply because of that comment about the link between rescue at sea and permanent settlement. We decided against it, but I do wish to put on the record our deep, deep disquiet about the wording of that part of the motion, because it is inaccurate and it continues to create an impression that a significant number of these 4 million desperate citizens are trying to come here because they are attracted to living in the United Kingdom. They are not; they are trying to get out of Syria because they do not want to die. I just wish that the terminology that has been used and the language of this debate would recognise that this is a crisis that has fundamentally been caused by war, violence and civil unrest. It has not been caused by an economic miracle happening in the United Kingdom or in Germany.