European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Baroness Stroud Excerpts

Committee: 7th sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Wednesday 14th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Whitaker (Lab)]

My Lords, at this very late hour I say that I agree with everything that other noble Lords have said and add that our record has not been what it should be in implementing our obligations regarding this most deserving of humanitarian problems. We should improve it, not curtail it, so I support these very moderate amendments.

[Baroness Stroud (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to this amendment, moved by the noble Lord, Lord Dubs. Our exit from the European Union presents us with a unique opportunity to define, in our own terms, the country we want to be. This nation is and always has been generous and open-minded towards refugees and has offered a home in times of trouble. From the Huguenots to the Belgians and Jewish refugees, we have a strong tradition of welcoming those who seek shelter. As a child, I can remember my own mother working as a nurse to welcome the Ugandan Asian refugees, and then later the Vietnamese boat people. This seemed only natural to me, given that my own father had been evacuated as a child to Canada during the war. This tradition is something which I hope, regardless of one’s views on Brexit or the European Union, we can all agree on.

In the period January 2016 to September 2017, the UK welcomed a total of 9,897 refugees, approximately half of whom were female and half were children. We can and we should do more, and we should seek to keep open and available every channel by which people are able to safely seek asylum. Dublin III is one of the ways in which respect for family life and unaccompanied minors’ best interests are kept at the heart of the asylum process. For some 300,000 unaccompanied child refugees, the risks of trafficking and forced prostitution or forced labour are extremely high. We know that in the Mediterranean, more than 75% of the 1,600 14 to 16 year-olds arriving in Italy reported being held against their will or forced to work. This staggering statistic is absolutely why we should be working to ensure that there are accessible, legal routes such as Dublin III, which allow children to apply for asylum safely from the country they are in, and not be forced to take dangerous journeys to join their families.

For children and adults fleeing conflict, the best place for them to be is with family members. This offers the best possible chance for them to thrive and rebuild their lives post trauma. The co-operation that Dublin III offers aids this but, as we all know, the Dublin conventions are only a small part of the story, and while the co-operation should remain, it is one strand of a much wider issue.

From the Calais operation, just 29 of the 769 children who were transferred to the UK came from the Dublin regulation route, and in 2016 just 355 people were transferred under this route. To date, the UK has taken in 10,538 refugees from Syria—just over half of the number we committed to resettle by 2020. We have so far welcomed around 220 children under Section 67 of the Immigration Act, which my noble friend Lord Dubs fought so hard to obtain: less than 1/10th of the original number committed to. Going forward, is this the sort of country we want to be?

Brexit is an opportunity to re-evaluate our priorities as a country and refocus on the country we want to be. Being an open nation with a generous welcome for those in need of our shelter should be a key part of that. I understand the limitations of Dublin III. But I call on my noble friend the Minister to clarify and confirm in this Committee that, post March 2019, the Government’s new and independent approach to refugees would guarantee that those who benefited under the old system would still benefit under the new, and that no restriction would be put in place preventing those in need from being reunited with their families.

[Lord Judd]

My Lords, I would like to thank the noble Baroness, Lady Stroud, for that speech—not just for the speech but because it was the voice of compassionate, socially engaged conservatism, which I have always respected. May that tradition in the Conservative Party reassert itself. It is desperately needed at this juncture in our history. What the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, said about the legal situation was also a powerful argument, which the Government must answer. Are we going to strip what have been legal rights away?

In the context of this Bill, we debate from time to time what sort of Britain we want to be, and the noble Baroness, Lady Stroud, was absolutely right. I share completely her view about the sort of Britain we should be. I want us to be a Britain in which the world sees “Compassion” in capital letters in all our approach to public affairs. We seem to have lost that and I want to see it reasserted. I thank my noble friend Lord Dubs for having moved this amendment. His consistent and tireless work on this issue challenges us all. If we talk about family and its importance in society, this is an issue which we can no longer prevaricate about.