Middle East and North Africa — House of Lords, 2015-09-16
Topic: Immigration
Sandip Verma (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I remember the question. I will need to go back and source the answer for the noble Lord. At this moment, I suspect that we are working with local authorities and so will not have a precise answer for him, but I promise to take the question back The noble Lord, Lord Hannay, asked why we were limiting the expansion to Syrians. It is important to note that by the end of 2014 Syria was the top source country for refugees: one in every four refugees was from Syria. It was right and proper that we focused our efforts there first. The UK has already run many resettlement schemes that do not restrict nationality, such as the Gateway Protection Programme and the Mandate refugee scheme that I mentioned earlier. The noble Lord also asked how the UK was supporting health education and economic opportunities for refugees in the region. UK support in the region is providing medical assistance for refugees in Lebanon. The UK is working alongside the Government to expand the education system to reach thousands of Syrian children and improve basic services. The Prime Minister’s recent announcement will double education support for refugee children over the next three years— £30 million over three years. We will continue to talk to host Governments to expand livelihood opportunities for Syrian refugees I was asked about support for the work of the Navy and new naval activity. The Royal Navy has today offered the warship HMS "Richmond", as has been mentioned by a number of noble Lords, to boost the Government’s efforts to tackle people smuggling in the Mediterranean. It will support a surge of EU activity to tackle people smuggling before the start of winter and we welcome all noble Lords’ support I was asked whether there was a buffer zone in Jordan or other neighbouring countries. There is no official buffer zone for Syrians in Jordan. There are processing centres to register all Syrians for these countries The noble Lord, Lord Roberts, asked whether those arriving would be allowed to work. Under the scheme, they will be allowed to work and access benefits. They will have a five-year settlement visa and be able to have all the rights that come with that settlement. They will be assisted in the first year by ODA money and will then have access to the benefits and education systems, social services and health services that any British citizen would. That will be available to them I was also asked about what we were doing to encourage Gulf states to contribute more to the international response. We have actively engaged with the Gulf states on the humanitarian response in Syria. The Gulf states continue to contribute generously to the UN Syria appeals. Kuwait has hosted three fundraising conferences for the Syrian crisis, raising billions of dollars. This year, some $3.6 billion has been raised at the Kuwait pledging conference I have a number of responses to get through but I am fast running out of time. I would like to end by saying that it is really important to recognise that the work that the British Government, the British people and our NGOs are doing is going a long way towards helping to provide support for desperate people, but it is not enough. We need to encourage others to rise to the mark because as we try to build a more stable and prosperous world, there will be greater need. We are leading the international community in our response, but the UK cannot do it alone. Where I have not been able to respond to all the questions that have been put to me, I offer to write. However, as always, we could have taken a lot longer over this debate.