Wednesday 20 August 2014

Help for genuine refugees is vital as we play our role in these difficult times

The Commons debated this issue before the House rose and my position is set out in brief in the speech I gave, the link to which is below.
http://www.theyworkforyou.com/whall/?id=2014-07-22a.379.0&s=speaker%3A24962#g392.0
The key passage for me is this:
"To misquote Charles Dickens in 2014, these are the best of times and the worst of times. It is an age of wisdom and an age of foolishness. There is a season of light, there is a season of darkness. There is a spring of hope and there is a winter of despair.
To look at the worst of times, others have set out graphically the vast scale of the problem. There are 50 million refugees, and huge numbers of Syrians, for example, are fleeing that conflict zone—it is that country I particularly want to focus on. We debate the issue on 22 July with conflict in Gaza and Israel, with no cessation of rockets or hostilities, no durable ceasefire and no progress to a two-state solution. At the same time, Russia and Ukraine are in a separatist dispute that is producing ever more refugees, and there has been the horrifying loss of flight MH17.
One could say that the debate brought by my hon. Friend Pauline Latham MP is particularly timely because there is a risk that while all those atrocities are going on and being shown on the television, conflicts and refugee situations that have been going on for a considerable time have almost been forgotten. It is a fantastic aspect of the House of Commons first, that when we get this job we gain a greater understanding of the huge complexity of the problems faced around the world and secondly that, on a hot and steamy morning, Members from four different parties are here, making the case that we genuinely all care, on a cross-party basis, about the suffering of the individuals involved in these situations."
For more details on the debate and my speech click on the link above.