Refugees: Mass Displacement — House of Lords, 2022-01-06
Topic: Immigration
Jeremy Purvis (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries of Pentregarth, commended the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for securing this debate and said that it was prophetic. I agree very strongly with that, and I commend the noble Lord for doing so, too. His powerful contributions in this place are often, depressingly, not just prophetic but based on experience of past mistakes, from which we continually do not learn and which we repeat—including 40 years ago, when he visited Lebanon. I shall be there in two weeks’ time, and I shall no doubt see many of the pressures that existed at the time in a tinderbox area. Equally, it is a country, as my noble friend indicated, where one in eight of the population is not Lebanese. There is a great complexity there, with great generosity, openness and tolerance, in an area of economic vulnerability and conflict. My noble friend also gave the illustration of the case whereby we in the UK, by our direct hands, have caused many of the concerns, especially of those who have worked with us and supported us in Afghanistan. Her brilliant speech was made much earlier than she expected, and it was more brief but brilliant nevertheless The noble Lord, Lord Alton, gave some figures on the scale of the crisis. My noble friend called them "breathtaking", and the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, called them "vast" and "shameful". They all are. The noble Lord, Lord Alton, commended the Norwegian Government and the excellent GRID report, funded by that Government, on internally displaced people in 2020. It provides data that is even more alarming. We have been distracted here because of the pandemic, perhaps understandably, but we have neglected to recognise, according to the GRID report, the 40.5 million new people displaced in 2020, 9.8 million by conflict and 30.7 million by disasters. The average time after a disaster for people to return to their homes is five years, so what is happening in 2020 will have to be addressed for a number of years to come. This is a growing problem, not a receding one When natural calamity strikes, people are desperate to return home; they want shelter, food and services—and, when they are restored, they are very keen to return to their homes. When conflict scorches their homelands, people flee, but they want to return when safety and security are restored. Regrettably, the average time for returnees because of conflict displacement is 13 years. On climate, weather-related events were responsible for 98% of all disaster displacement recorded in 2020. Disaster resilience is therefore essential, and yesterday’s Question on Typhoon Odette was testament to this Can the Minister clarify an answer that he gave yesterday to the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, who referred to a review carried out by my late noble friend Lord Ashdown on behalf of Andrew Mitchell, as Secretary of State, on disaster resilience? The noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, asked: "Can the Minister therefore tell us exactly the effects of the cuts announced to the development programme on the money spent on disaster resilience?" The Minister—the noble Lord, Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park, who is in his place—said that "I do not think it is possible to provide an exact answer", and the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes intervened to ask "Why not?" To that the Minister said: "Because I do not think that answer exists, and it is hard to assess."—[Official Report, 5/1/2022; cols. 570-1.] The very same Minister was trumpeting at COP 26 what the Government claimed was additional support for disaster resilience. Can the Minister be clear as to what the position is? At the moment it is opaque In a previous debate on development policy, the Minister and I had an interaction with regard to multilateral support. We know that for systematic and sustained responses, as the noble Lord, Lord Alton, has called for, one of the most effective ways of providing this is through a multilateral response, whether through UNDP or UNOCHA on the ground or co-ordinated through the World Bank IDA. This was also evidenced in a report during the time of the coalition Government, commissioned by Andrew Mitchell, which showed the effectiveness of multilateral aid In our debate on 16 December, I questioned why the Government had cut support specifically for this area. The Minister replied that it is "right that that is part of the strategy, but it is not an overall or meaningful cut in real terms … There is plenty of room there for us to redirect some of that funding in a way that we think is strategic."—[Official Report, 16/12/21; col. 478.] What the Minister believes is not a meaningful cut in real terms was, I remind the House, £1.8 billion. That was a cut, and it meant that the replenishment of the IDA—an essential fund for disaster resilience in developing countries and highlighted specifically by the World Bank and those recipient countries—could not be met, because other countries could not meet the UK shortfall. I believe that a 55% cut is meaningful, and I hope that the Government will reconsider this for the next replenishment. The scale of the problem will not be alleviated in the period when we are cutting our aid Let us not forget that the convergence of conflict and disasters has led to people being displaced for a second or third time. Many of those fleeing flooding in Yemen have already been displaced by conflict—and the UK Government’s response was to cut aid to the people of Yemen by 60% without carrying out an impact assessment. Drought in Somalia has forced people to flee to urban areas, putting them at greater security risk, which the Government themselves have said is the greatest priority area of concern. According to DevTracker today, however, the support that the UK provided in 2019-20—£260 million—is now, believe it or not, going down to £20 million in 2023-24. That is an astronomically cruel cut for the people of Somalia. The noble Lord, Lord Alton, called for leadership. This is the polar opposite of global leadership, and I hope that the Government will think again Internally displaced persons add a greater complexity. My noble friend highlighted the situation in Lebanon, but many other countries have hosted. The fact that many people flee within their own boundaries is often neglected. The number of those who fled conflict within Iraq reached 3 million people. If we visualise the entire population of Wales having to resettle en masse to the Midlands over a period of five years, what pressure would that put on our own infrastructure and services? We should have a little more sympathy for the many countries that have had to cope with this. What was the UK response? To cut support for Iraq from £50 million to £3 million. Can the Minister say why The noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, rightly mentioned the Yazidis. Before Christmas, I was in north Iraq and met Vian Dakhil, the Yazidi MP. Of those who have returned within Iraq, 280,000 Yazidis remain displaced—that is 70% of the Sinjar population. Of those in the Duhok camp in north Iraq, 99% are Yazidi. There is still no formal way of officially documenting the Yazidi genocide, which acts against building confidence for returning. Still the injustices are repeated for many Yazidis, and there is a lack of implementation of the Sinjar agreement. If the Minister responds to anything that I have said today, I hope that it will be on the UK increasing support for the implementation of the Sinjar agreement for the Yazidi people, who continue to have injustices levelled against them The scale of this is colossal and will remain with us. The UK is diminishing, not increasing, our level of support. However, I am glad that the noble Lord started this debate not simply by talking about the global figures. He named those children and individuals who have perished in our waters at the same time as I was travelling to Kurdistan. They were seeking shelter here in the UK because they wanted the same as what we want for our own people. They are our brothers and our sisters and our children, and we should be thinking of them and supporting them in exactly the way that we should be supporting our own people.