2. What steps she is taking to improve the co-ordination of humanitarian support for Syria and the surrounding region. (165585)

Humanitarian actors are working tirelessly throughout the region, dealing with 1.7 million refugees now outside Syria and 4 million internally displaced people still inside Syria. Improving co-ordination and access is absolutely critical, which is why on 3 July I hosted a meeting with donors and key UN agencies in London to map out some steps on how we continue to up our game. Last week I also visited Lebanon.

Does the Secretary of State agree that an enormous burden is being placed on the countries that neighbour Syria, and that the international community must help them so that they can be fully supported?

Yes, I do. It is projected that Lebanon, a country with a population of 4 million, will have 1 million refugees by the end of the year. If the same proportion of refugees were to arrive in the UK, the figure would be upwards of 15 million. We need to do everything we can to support not only the refugees but the host communities that they are going into.

The UNICEF ambassador Eddie Izzard recently returned from Syria. He said that

“missing from these discussions are the Syrian children, who are not made of steel, and who are facing desperate and harrowing conditions.”

He specifically drew attention to the lack of education for children there. What conversations has DFID had about providing schooling for children in Syria?

This is something that DFID has particularly focused on. We have given funding directly to UNICEF to support educational facilities—when I was in the Zaatari camp in Jordan, I saw school facilities that had recently been built—and to support counselling. I would like to look more carefully with the United Nations agencies at what we can do to provide trauma counselling for children and their parents, because many of them have gone through awful experiences before ending up in the refugee camps.

When King Abdullah of Jordan was in London recently, he told us that there was a massive problem with crime, violent assault, rape, prostitution and trafficking involving women who had been displaced by the violence in Syria. What action are we taking to ensure that those women and girls can be protected, because currently they are not?

We do our best work with the UN agencies, which are co-ordinating much of the relief to ensure that the most vulnerable are protected. The right hon. Gentleman will be aware that about 75% of the refugees leaving Syria are women and children, so this is incredibly important. Alongside that work, we clearly need to work in the host communities in places like Jordan to ensure that they are able to cope with this huge influx of people who are placing added pressure on their services, which can often cause tension leading to the kind of trouble that he has mentioned.

The United Nations reports that the refugee crisis in Syria is the worst since that in Rwanda, and that 6,000 people—over half of them children—are fleeing the country every day. What does the Secretary of State intend to do to protect the health and education of those children in what is becoming a catastrophic humanitarian disaster?

The hon. Gentleman is right to point out the comments of António Guterres, who is heading up the refugee operation. As I said earlier, we are particularly focused on what we can do to support the most vulnerable, and that includes children. We are doubling our support to over £300 million in the coming months, and I can assure him that we will put the appropriate amount of that into helping children cope with what is happening to them and ensuring that they are still preparing for the rest of their lives through education.

14. Britain is leading the way in providing humanitarian relief, but some of our international partners are perhaps doing less well. Given that many refugee camps are still suffering desperate shortages of basic amenities, will the Secretary of State apply more pressure on her international partners and encourage them to step up to the plate? (165597)

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We played a leading role in galvanising donors at the Kuwait conference earlier this year, and I regularly raise this issue with donors and with the UN. I will continue to do that at the UN General Assembly in September. It is critical that, when countries come to a donor conference and make pledges, they should honour them. It is also critical that the region itself should take steps to ensure that it, too, is playing its full role.

The UN emergency relief co-ordinator, Valerie Amos, has highlighted the need for cross-border access for international agencies so they can provide appropriate medical and other help to refugees. What progress has been made in the UN Security Council towards obtaining such access without requiring the consent of the Syrian Government?

The short answer is not nearly enough. Access to Syria is still overly restricted, particularly by the regime, and we are seeing attacks and violence against humanitarian workers and convoys. That is totally unacceptable, and we will continue to raise our concern about it at the highest levels of the UN.