Adam Holloway
Main Page: Adam Holloway (Conservative - Gravesham)Department Debates - View all Adam Holloway's debates with the Home Office
(8 years, 8 months ago)
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Mr Adam Holloway (Gravesham) (Con)
People across Britain, including one of my constituents who was on the phone, wept when they saw that little boy’s body on the beach. Good people, such as the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), scream out in empathy that we should be doing something to help these people and assimilating more refugees to help the desperate. I completely agree on the need for action and the need to help those whose lives have been crushed by war and to do, with an enormous international effort, much more than we are doing now—as she said, a kind of Marshall plan.
However, I also think that the Prime Minister is completely right when he says that receiving ever more people simply is not the answer. In fact, I believe that much of the EU, and the Germans, are completely bonkers if they give ever growing numbers of refugees and migrants, picked up in the Mediterranean or elsewhere in Europe, the right to settle in Europe. There are hundreds of millions of people in the borderlands of Europe who are poor or affected by war, wanting better lives for their families, so we have to make it absolutely clear that people will not be allowed to live in Europe if they try to get in through the back door.
Mr Holloway
Give me a couple of minutes. Just let me get into my stride.
Instead, those who are refugees should be offered a well-resourced place of safety—perhaps in Europe, but more probably in a safe place in the region where they live—and if it turns out that someone is an economic migrant, they should be taken home. This is not xenophobic: it is moral, practical, fair and sustainable over many years. As I see it, it is the only way to slow the number of bodies landing on the beaches and to allow Europe to re-establish control of its borders, which it has now lost. If we fail to achieve this, millions more people will make these journeys and we will be overwhelmed in the years ahead and less able to send resources to the region.
There are big disparities in security and economic opportunities between nations, and they will not be solved by short-term measures, such as giving hundreds of thousands of people asylum within Europe. It is not an idle exaggeration or scaremongering to say that over the coming years we are looking at potentially hundreds of millions of people seeking a better life in Europe. The numbers have grown and will grow as long as we continue to reward these journeys with the opportunity to settle in Europe.
Let us be hard-headed about this: not all migrants are refugees. By way of illustration, Al Jazeera reporting from the Greek side of the border with Macedonia showed that large numbers of Syrians were trying to dissociate themselves from people from other places. It said:
“They want to separate themselves from the other nationalities; the Pakistanis, the Afghans, the Iraqis...what they say is that all these other nationalities claim to be Syrians as well, because it is the Syrians who have the most valid claim to asylum.”
When populations flee war or famine, they generally flee together, as I saw as a television reporter and a soldier. They flee with the elderly, the infants and the women as well as the men. [Interruption.] Yes, I would. The current migrants are overwhelmingly working-age males who have paid a hefty price to make the trip. Most of the countries they came from are certainly poor, but they are not at war. It costs thousands to board a smuggler’s boat and a lot of money in the months before to travel to it.
As a TV reporter in the 1990s, I remember doing a piece about landlords in north London ripping off the housing benefit system. I was living in a house with a lot of people, including many from Congo, many of whom had been soldiers. I remember lying on my bed in this room that I was sharing with half a dozen of these guys, and I thought to myself, “Who is more likely to get to England and to north London: is it the soldier who had an AK47 and a fistful of dollars or the widow with seven children and not a cent to her name?”
Some years ago, I lived under cover for a couple of weeks in the Sangatte camp in Calais when I was working for ITV. I think there are some parallels with the situation today. Living side by side with people in the camp, it seemed to me that the overwhelming majority of the people who got as far as Calais were economic migrants. Every night, hundreds of us, all young men, would burst out of the camp as it started to get dark. We would spend the night cutting the wire, trying to get on to freight trains; we would be picked up the next morning by the French police and what we called the police taxi service to take us back to the camp.
If I had been one of those guys—then from Iran, Kosovo, the Kurdish areas of Iraq and Turkey—I would have done exactly the same as they did. How can we possibly criticise people for wanting a better life? Most were doing just that—looking for a better life. In many cases, their families had sold land to get the money to pay the people smugglers, and they had travelled to northern France unchecked. This still seems to be the case in Calais today. Not long ago, many people got out of an unsafe country to get there and they travelled through many safe countries subsequently. What they are doing now is trying to get into their country of choice.
Stuart C. McDonald
Is the hon. Gentleman aware of the information sent by the Immigration Minister to the Home Affairs Select Committee, confirming that the most common nationalities among those at Calais included Syrians, Eritreans and Afghans? Refugees can be wealthy as well. The fact is that the United Nations has been absolutely clear that this is a refugee crisis and it is very likely the majority of people at Calais are refugees. Why does the hon. Gentleman persist in peddling myths?
Mr Holloway
The hon. Gentleman did not listen to what I said. I said that those people had been through dozens of safe countries by the time they get to Calais. It is quite possible to be a refugee and an economic migrant. [Interruption.] One of the appalling truths about the Syrian bodies washed up on the beaches is that they previously got to safe countries and are now choosing to come to Europe. Again, I would do the same. Likewise, people in this country have claimed asylum in this country and then they go back on holiday to the places from where they have claimed that asylum. I could not get my hair cut the other day for that reason.
Australia used to have a severe—[Interruption.] Labour Members should rise to intervene if they want to say something.
Stephen Doughty
Thank you, Mr Speaker. I am sorry, but the hon. Gentleman is being very unhelpful by doing what many other Conservative Members are doing in constantly blurring the lines of definition between refugee, migrant, economic migrant and asylum seeker. The reality is that he is out of step with what the British public feel about this. People of all parties in my constituency are making it clear what they feel about the issue. This is a different situation, and the constant blurring of those definitions does not help.
Mr Holloway
We will not get anywhere unless we are clear that there is a difference between a refugee and an economic migrant. [Interruption.] I said it was possible to be both. Australia used to have a big migrant crisis, but does not have one now. Why? Because the Government took bold action. As Tony Abbott said—[Interruption.] Opposition Members should not laugh; this is true. Tony Abbott said:
“If we do the slightest thing to encourage people to get on the boats, this problem will get worse, not better.”
We cannot have a rational discussion of this issue, unless we accept that not all migrants are refugees. Economic migrants should apply properly, like everyone else, before leaving home. It should not be the case that people have only to arrive in Europe to be allowed to stay in Europe.
Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)
I thank my very hon. Friend for giving way. Both he and I know that the real sadness is that some people in Syria will be petrified and unable to move because they do not have a penny. These people are refugees without being able to be refugees because they are stuck in Syria, petrified, slowly watching their families being killed.
Mr Holloway
Absolutely, and I think we have a deep moral obligation to people who find themselves caught up in the wreckage of warring nations, or who find themselves persecuted.
During the Balkan wars, I posed as a deaf and dumb Bosnian Muslim in Serb territory—from the Kosara valley, Banja Luka and over the bridge at Bosanska Gradiška. We travelled down in a great big convoy of escaping Bosnian Muslims and Croats on trains. I ended up living in a mosque with refugees and then in a refugee camp in northern Croatia, followed by a prison cell in Austria, having been arrested with the Macedonian people smugglers who were taking us into Europe. Most of the people with whom I travelled from Serb territory remained in local refugee camps until the war ended. The vast majority now remain in former Yugoslavia, if not in their old homes.
These terrified people were most certainly refugees, and I will never forget the behaviour of the soldiers, and border guards and police towards these families, including an incident in which a child was literally picked up by the hair and thrown out of a bus on to a concrete hard shoulder. With 4 million Syrians displaced outside their country, and many more within it, what will be the effect of an open door from the European Union? Can anyone tell me what number of people would understandably move west? Can anyone tell me at what point our nations would turn round and say, “Hang on, we cannot keep on taking people from poorer countries into our communities”?
Geraint Davies
The hon. Gentleman said that Germany was “bonkers”. Is he aware that after the second world war, Germany absorbed an extra 12 million people, mainly Germans fleeing from Czechoslovakia and elsewhere. It has an open door for another 800,000 next year—it was 300,000 last year— and it has an ageing population so it could do with the workers. It is not “bonkers”. It has an open heart and an open mind—neither of which the hon. Gentleman has.
Mr Holloway
Well, I think it is completely bonkers. In my view, it is also immoral because we will see more and more bodies washed up. We are just going to have to disagree on this.
I think we could help a lot more people if the international community behaved a bit more like my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, by trying to support as many Syrian refugees as possible through helping the many, as opposed to the few—helping all those camped out across Lebanon, Turkey, Jordan and elsewhere. That would be better than focusing on a lucky minority who will get to Europe.
Back in May, the European Commission made the insane proposal that member countries should take in migrants and refugees under a quota scheme. Notwithstanding other comments that he has made, Viktor Orbán, the Prime Minister of Hungary, noted at the time:
“The proposal on the table from the European Commission…is absurd, bordering on insanity… It is an incentive for human traffickers and will simply tell people: yes, try to cross the Mediterranean at all costs.”
Our Government rightly ruled out the EU asylum policy as an open invitation to uncontrolled immigration. The Australian general Jim Molan put it like this:
“Europe needs to make a very big decision and to make it soon. If it does not want to control its borders then it should establish a sea bridge across the Mediterranean, let everyone in who wants to come, and not let these people die.”
Let us not forget that there are some very wealthy Sunni states with dogs in the Syrian fight. Refugees should be looked after in the first available country that they come to, or in their regions. There are plenty of very wealthy countries with land that is closer to those regions.
Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)
The hon. Gentleman has referred approvingly to Australia’s treatment of migrants and refugees. I wonder whether he is aware of an editorial published a few days ago by The New York Times, which described Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s methods and policies as
“inhumane, of dubious legality and strikingly at odds with the country's tradition of welcoming people fleeing persecution and war.”
Mr Holloway
I myself wonder how many people have not drowned because of those policies, but, again, we shall have to differ.
We must return those who are not entitled to claim asylum to their countries of origin, and—as we heard from the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford—try to find mechanisms to help the very, very large numbers of refugees in the region. We must consider establishing migration centres in safe places outside the EU, or possibly within it, for those who are rescued or those who have arrived. I believe that, in the jargon, that is called “extraterritorial processing”. In 2003, the Labour Government presented their idea for “transit processing centres”. Those proposing such an offshore asylum strategy could also learn from what the Australians have done in Papua New Guinea.
There are millions of genuine refugees from Syria alone, plus millions of economic migrants from numerous countries, whom we must discourage, and those are not numbers that it will to be possible to accommodate through dispersal within Europe. Besides, Syria needs a regional solution; relocating people away from the region does not offer the long-term approach that it requires.
At some stage, we shall have to realise that big boys’ toys—that drones, lean men with unseasonal suntans and Viking moustaches, and fast jets—do not end wars. What ends wars, ultimately, is working on the politics, and sometimes that means going into partnership with some pretty unpleasant people. However, that is for another debate.
Let me say this in conclusion—Members will be relieved to hear that. If we do not act to break the link between a journey and a right to remain, millions of migrants may arrive on European soil over the next couple of years alone. Today, if we keep sending people in poorer or less stable countries the message that once they are picked up by the Royal Navy, or walk into Hungary, or reach a Greek island, they will have a ticket to a whole new life in Europe there and then, ever-growing numbers will come. Wouldn't you?
Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)
The hon. Gentleman’s argument seems to be predicated on the idea that the fact that Australia has said no to boatloads of people has had the effect of stopping people going. Is he aware of the number of people who are continuing to drown while trying to get to Australia? Is there not just a vague possibility that the boats are not a pull factor, and that it is the need to flee for their lives that is making people take this risk? Operation Mare Nostrum was stopped in the Mediterranean because there was an idea that doing so would somehow stop people coming, but that simply was not true. People are dying and fighting for their lives; surely they deserve our protection.
Mr Holloway
They absolutely deserve our protection, and that is where I am coming from in this debate. We have to be hard-nosed and realistic. It is all very well to try to make oneself feel better, but we must do what is sustainable, moral and right in the long term.
Unless the message gets through to people in these countries, we are inviting hundreds of millions to seek a better life in Europe and Britain. Either we are a nation state or we are not. Either we are able to be serious about helping the many millions who are affected, or we are not. We should decide who comes into our country, not the German Government, and not the people smugglers. The message needs to be much clearer, or the drownings and the chaos will go on.
I completely understand the sentiments of those, here and in my constituency, who are demanding that something be done. We must do the right thing for the long term, in order to prevent the tides of death many of which we will never see in a newspaper. We need to resist the temptation to do what makes us feel better, and start coming up with some proper ideas that could solve the problem.
Stella Creasy
The hon. Gentleman raises the point about the well-founded fear, but my point is that every generation faces the test that the 1951 convention sets us. When a person comes to us and says, “I am in danger, will you help me?”, how we answer defines us as much as it defines their future. As the hon. Member for Gravesham said, it is a moral question. When we signed the convention in 1951, nobody could have predicted the situation that we are in now, but the fact that we could not predict it does not absolve us of the responsibility to answer the question. We are not absolved when the people fleeing the murderous intent of ISIL ask, “Will you help?” Our answer should be yes. When people are fleeing sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo, will you help? Yes. When people are fleeing the repressive regime of Robert Mugabe, will you help? Yes. When people are fleeing civil war in Sudan and Eritrea, will you help? Yes. How we answer says as much about us as it does about them, so when we quibble about numbers and qualify them by saying that we will take 20,000 but over a number of years, or perhaps that we will take not 20,000 but up to 20,000—
Mr Holloway
So rather than quibbling, will the hon. Lady tell me how many people we should be taking in her constituency and for how long?
Stella Creasy
I shall come on to talk about Walthamstow and am happy to invite the hon. Gentleman, who need not come under cover, to see the welcome that we give to people in Walthamstow. It is not easy, but we do it because it says something about us as a country and a community that when people are at risk we answer the call. When the people of Germany have answered the call to the tune of 800,000, when the people of Sweden have answered the call by taking eight per 1,000 of population, that challenges us all in the UK.
Let us look at the camps, because the Government are specifying that we should take people from the camps alone. When we consider the figure of 800,000 taken by Germany, it is sobering to realise that Lebanon has taken more than 1.1 million people in a country of 4.5 million.