Andrew Rosindell – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Andrew Rosindell on 2015-10-13.

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what steps he has taken to encourage other nations in the Levant and Arabian peninsula to accept refugees from Syria.

Mr Tobias Ellwood

We have been at the forefront of the humanitarian response to the crisis in Syria, having committed over £1.1bn, which includes funding for regional countries to assist arriving refugees.

The Prime Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Mr Cameron), recently visited Lebanon and Jordan, where he paid tribute to the efforts of these countries in hosting Syrian refugees. Syria’s neighbours have been incredibly generous in welcoming huge numbers of refugees. There are now over four million Syrian refugees in the region, including over one million who fled Syria in 2014 alone. Turkey hosts the highest number of refugees, at over 2 million, followed by Lebanon at over 1 million and Jordan at over 628,000. The UK has allocated £559 million to support refugees in the region and vulnerable host communities to date, including £304 million in Lebanon and £193 million in Jordan. The Gulf States continue to contribute generously to humanitarian support for the Syria crisis, and there are large numbers of Syrians already in the Gulf.