Refugee Family Reunion

Angus Brendan MacNeil Excerpts

Thursday 20th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)]

I beg to move,

That this House notes that 20 June is World Refugee Day; further notes that, with record levels of global displacement across the world, many refugee families have been separated by war and persecution; welcomes that in 2018 the UK granted 5,806 family reunion visas to partners and children of refugees in the UK; and calls on the Government to introduce reforms to family reunion rules to ensure that the close relatives of all refugees in the UK have safe and legal pathways to reunite with their families in the UK.

Much has been happening in and around the House of Commons, and in many other places, to mark World Refugee Day and Loneliness Awareness Week. There has been a lack of progress on the Refugees (Family Reunion) (No. 2) Bill, which should have been passed by the House of Commons under this Government.

The idea of a “pull factor” was one of the hares set running on Second Reading on 16 March 2018, and the Bill has not progressed much further. Lord Kerr addressed that in the House of Lords:

“Is it really plausible that, say in Idlib—

or, indeed, any city in the world—

“if it is under siege in six weeks’ time, the family sits around the dining table, pick a child and tell it that it must set off across the battle lines and the Mediterranean, to try to get into England so that it can then pull the family into England? That is implausible. We are talking about refugee reunion and about children. We really must stop talking about this wildly implausible pull factor. They come here to escape being killed; they do not come here in order to become a magnet for the rest of the family.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 11 May 2018; Vol. 791, c. 372.]

If we bear that in mind in this debate, and in each and every other debate on refugees, we will do ourselves and, indeed, refugees a great service by showing them the respect they deserve for what they have been through.

It would be worth while, as I did on Second Reading, to begin by talking about the idea of refugees. I began that debate by talking about Yohannes, a young welder from Eritrea living in Canterbury. Last month, I came across an article in The Independent headlined, “Germany’s refugee intake begins to boost economy as settlers soothe country’s worker shortage”. I re-emphasise that today’s refugee is tomorrow’s worker contributing to the economy.

[Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)]

I warmly congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. He has been a powerful champion and advocate, and I hope that, at the end, the Government will allow time for his Bill to proceed. Once families are reunited under his proposals, it is important that they contribute properly to the economy. Does he agree that the Government must move forward on extending the right to work to asylum seekers?

[Angus Brendan MacNeil]

My hon. Friend makes the case well. We should treat asylum seekers as normally as possible. We often talk about spectrums nowadays, and there is perhaps an argument that we are all on a spectrum of refugees, asylum seekers and movers. A person who moves from one town to another for work is a person on the move. We have various words to grade that movement.

I have been cautioned about making the comparison because, in a way, it minimises or downplays the trauma some people have been through, but on the other hand it is a way of partially seeing ourselves in other people’s shoes. We are not quite escaping war and the threat of being killed, but moving for economic circumstances is a normal thing to do. The more we treat the situation as normal, as my hon. Friend clearly said, the better.

Germany is fairly normal. The article in The Independent says:

“In his native Syria, Mohammed Kassim worked as an electrician. But having learned the trade informally, he lacked the credentials to show for it. Now, in his adopted homeland, the 30-year-old is receiving the training he never had and he is getting paid to do it by a company dangling the promise of a job that could vault him from struggling refugee to member of the German middle class.”

That is the sort of story we want to hear, four years after many people came to Germany. Of course, it is not all sweetness and light. A number of those people are still unemployed, but that is changing. The article continues:

“But after spending billions of euros to accommodate the newcomers, Germany is beginning to reap some gains.”

The German economy is benefiting from the presence of more people, who happen to be refugees.

I will set out the global context. There are about 24 million refugees worldwide, and every day some 44,000 people are forced to flee their home as a result of conflict and persecution. To give some idea, 44,000 people would probably fill Ibrox and Parkhead in the Scottish premier league, and would certainly fill the average stadium in the English premiership. That is a lot of people who are forced to move every day, and this movement of people within and across borders is creating significant policy challenges for Governments across the world and is linked to enormous humanitarian needs.

It is worth reminding ourselves of the definition. A person seeking asylum has normally left their own country due to war, persecution or violence and has requested sanctuary in another country, and their application to receive legal protection has yet to be processed. Importantly, refugees are at the next stage—this is where my Bill comes in. A refugee is someone who has been forced to flee his country and has been recognised as having a well-founded fear of persecution. They are not only fleeing as an asylum seeker, but this has now been accepted by others. The reason for persecution could be race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership of a particular social group, as we recently saw in Myanmar. A refugee has been granted special legal protection on that basis. War and ethnic, tribal or religious violence are leading causes of refugees fleeing their country. It is worth bearing that in mind.

[Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)]

In previous debates, we have drawn attention to refugee children and the fact that they cannot sponsor a relative to come over—this is unlike what happens in other countries. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that that is deplorable and adds to the trauma these children are already facing?

[Angus Brendan MacNeil]

The hon. Lady makes a point that is central to this speech and to the reason behind today’s debate.

[Ben Lake (Ceredigion) (PC)]

I agree with the hon. Lady on what she said. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the current situation has been exacerbated by the UK’s decision to opt out of applying article 10 of the EU directive on family reunion, which would have allowed unaccompanied children to act as sponsors for their family members?

[Angus Brendan MacNeil]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. I am glad I have taken both interventions together, because they overlap neatly. This perhaps dovetails into something else, which is that the UK opted out of some EU directives; if only Scotland could opt out of some UK directives. We will park that one there, but it does show that the idea of Brexit—[Interruption.] We had better park that one as well. The hon. Lady and hon. Gentleman got it right, as did the British Red Cross policy briefing for this debate.

The Red Cross recommendations are:

“Give adult refugees the right to sponsor their parents, siblings and children up to the age of 25 to join them in the UK under family reunification rules.”

That is normal in other places in Europe—places that have not opted out. It is the norm. The second recommendation is:

“Give child refugees the right to sponsor their parents as well as any siblings up to the age of 25 to join them in the UK under family reunification rules.”

The third recommendation is:

“Reintroduce legal aid for family reunion applications.”

Members will not be surprised to learn that those recommendations mirror closely, if not precisely, what my Bill set out to do. I refer to the Bill that has been choked by the Government in this House of Commons, despite the fact that it has had laudable and welcome support from Members from Labour, the Liberal Democrats, Change UK, Plaid Cymru and the Scottish National party, and from luminaries among the Conservative Back Benchers. All those voices from across the political spectrum were supporting the Bill.

I just want to say one thing to the Government and to colleagues across this House, as I know you want me to speak for only 12 to 15 minutes, Madam Deputy Speaker—[Interruption.] I should have mentioned that the Democratic Unionist party is supporting my Bill. Indeed, the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) is here, so thank goodness I remembered before I was reminded; otherwise, we might have had an Adjournment debate on the issue. The Bill has been supported across the House, and the plea I make to colleagues is that if the Government do not move on this now—there will be reshuffles, so there will be different personnel at the Home Office and things might move on a bit better—whoever else comes out at the beginning of the ballot in the next Parliament should be willing and open to move forward on this Bill, because it is shameful that the Government have not moved with this. Time in politics is short and time in government is even shorter, and things could have been done that have not happened. The Government could have looked back proudly had they reacted and done this, but I hope, and warn them, that this will not be the only time; I expect this to come forward again.

[Dr David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op)]

The hon. Gentleman is commendably keeping to time, and I shall be brief. One thing that the Government could do, in advance of whatever attitude they take to his Bill, is recognise that Syrians whom many of our communities have accepted are desperate to bring their families in. Does he agree that it would be right and proper if the Government were to encourage that, rather than put hurdles in these people’s way?

[Angus Brendan MacNeil]

Absolutely; people would be able to function far better. One thing that struck me from speaking to refugees—these things do not come through in briefing papers so clearly—is the difficulty they have sleeping at night because of worry. If someone is waking up at night worrying about family members, that must have an impact on the way they can conduct, advance and live the rest of their life. That must be a problem, so I absolutely agree with what the hon. Gentleman said, and I am glad he has raised that issue.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that one other barrier the Government must address is the high cost of citizenship applications, particularly for child refugees, who might have been here for many years? It costs the Government £300 to process a citizenship application, but they charge children, refugees, more than £1,200 to process one. This is profiteering; the Government make more than £2 million a week on these applications. That is one area where the Government could make the process of welcoming people to our country much better.

[Angus Brendan MacNeil]

The hon. Gentleman presents the point perfectly, and well done for that. It shows the feeling across the House on this, and I totally agree with what he said. There is so much the Government could do. There is so much the Home Office could do. It could be a facilitator. It could help, but for some reason it chooses not to be the great help it could be, and that is very disappointing.

At one of the events we held this week, we heard from Play for Progress, which helps with therapy, counselling and dealing with post-traumatic stress disorders through music, trust and knowing people. It is run by two doctors, Anna Macdonald and Saliah Khan. I thank the Inter-Parliamentary Union for giving us the room on Tuesday. We heard how the idea of using X-rays, which are not certain in their outcomes, to prove that people are of a certain age was unethical. We are talking about the use of X-rays to determine this from people’s bones, even when a paediatrician has said someone is a child and a number of medical experts have done the same. In some cases a social worker, but in most cases a bureaucrat will be saying that someone is not a child. The doctors pointed out that not only does one try to avoid using X-rays on children, but this is being done to try to prove an inconclusive point. It is being done for non-medical needs—for bureaucratic needs. That betrays a sad attitude within the Home Office and where it is leading this.

A constituent of mine from Lewis wants the Education Secretary to “increase funding for ESOL” so that people can learn English as a second language. She said that the money that would be spent on that would soon be recouped, through taxes during a person’s

“first eight months of employment at the national average wage.”

I will bring my remarks to an end, as otherwise you will start clearing your throat, Madam Deputy Speaker, as is the given signal. First, however, I wish to thank the number of organisations that have been helpful to me. I am sure that if I am not in the top seven in the ballot next time, they will help whoever is near the top. I wish to thank Lucy Wake at Amnesty International, Sam Nadel at Oxfam, James Bulman at the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Seb Klier at the Refugee Council and Jon Featonby at the British Red Cross for all the help they gave on the Bill. The great thing is that that shows that many people care about refugees. We are living in fairly stable circumstances, whereas in the past many people from the highlands and islands moved for economic reasons and due to highland clearances. It is not inconceivable that things will change and in the future our great grandchildren or those who come after might be in a situation that results in their becoming refugees.

I wish to end on a case study. People’s stories and situations are better here than the facts that we can drily drag from any situation. The case is as follows:

“Muhammed and Amal are from Syria. They fled to Libya with their four children shortly after the conflict began. Life in Libya became increasingly dangerous while they were there and after two years Muhammed decided to make the journey to Europe. Muhammed was granted refugee status in the UK. Aware that his son, Kusai, was due to turn 18 very soon, making him ineligible for family reunion, Muhammed immediately began the process of applying to bring his family to the UK.

That application was rejected. Muhammed knew that his 20-year-old daughter, Athar, might not be accepted but also knew that, under family reunion law, he had the right to bring his wife and any children under the age of 18 to the UK. It turned out that the reason for the rejection was Kusai’s passport expiring while the family was in Libya. While awaiting that decision Kusai turned 18 and became ineligible for family reunion. Muhammed appealed, and a judged ruled that while Muhammed’s wife and two youngest children were eligible for family reunion and could come to the UK, Kusai and Athar were rejected on the basis of being over 18 years old.

While Athar has remained in the region, Kusai decided to take matters into his own hands and took the dangerous journey across the Mediterranean to a makeshift camp in unthinkable conditions in Calais.”

That was in the famous jungle. That is the story that people have and it forms part of the points I can raise in my 15 minutes on refugees. Many other Members will raise different and better points, and we will all learn today from Members in all parts of the House as they say what they have to say. I look forward to hearing it.

[Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Angus Brendan MacNeil), not least because I can congratulate him on having secured this debate on an important topic, and also because, as he knows, my great-grandfather left the Western Isles after the clearances and was himself someone who, for economic reasons, was driven first to Glasgow and eventually to England. Had it worked out otherwise, I might have been a constituent of the hon. Gentleman’s, and in a rather small constituency who knows what could have happened. Let me leave that point to one side and move on to another personal matter.

Every day—today is as every day—I walk from home down to Chislehurst railway station. I go down a road called Old Hill, and on the junction with Lubbock Road there is a seat with a memorial plaque on it that is inscribed in these terms:

“Rev. & Mrs. I. E Davidson & Friends

Gratefully remembered by

All the BMJ Children

(68 of them rescued from Central Europe 1939)”.

The BMJ referred to is the Barbican Mission to the Jews. Reverend Davidson and his wife were based at Christ church in Lubbock Road in Chislehurst, where they set up a home for children who had been rescued, predominantly from Czechoslovakia and neighbouring countries, during the Kindertransport. They found refuge and a welcome in my home community of Chislehurst and are remembered there to this day with fondness and affection. This is an appropriate opportunity for me to pay tribute to their memory, and to all the people in our community in Bromley and Chislehurst who to this day keep alive that memory and that work for those who have suffered through displacement.

I was a sponsor of the Refugees (Family Reunion) (No. 2) Bill and hope the Government will reflect on the failure to allow that modest Bill to progress. In my judgment it is a shame, because the attitude embodied by the Davidsons and their friends and neighbours in Chislehurst before the second world war is the most genuine reflection of this country’s record and approach to refugees. The facts show that Britain has a very good track record on resettling the most vulnerable. It is worth observing that the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has said that the UK maintains its standing as one of the most generous countries for refugee resettlement. The UNHCR judges the community sponsorship programme, which enables community groups to welcome and support refugees directly, to be a success, although it is still in its early phases, and hopes that it will continue. In a sense, community sponsorship of that sort builds on the work of the Davidsons and their friends in the Barbican Mission all those years ago. I very much hope that the Government will continue that work and build on it.

In a recent written statement, the Home Secretary observed:

“The UK has a long history of supporting refugees in need of protection.”

He noted that we have welcomed tens of thousands of people in recent years and, since 2016, have resettled

“more refugees from outside Europe than any other EU member state”,

and I am glad that my right hon. Friend also confirmed

“the UK’s ongoing commitment to resettlement and set out our plans for after 2020.”—[Official Report, 17 June 2019; Vol. 662, c. 1-2WS.]

Compared with that good track record and generous spirit, it seems to me a little jarring that we have a restriction that prevents children who have come here lawfully as refugees—whose refugee status has been accepted—from being able to bring their closest relatives to come and support them. We are not talking about a large number of people, nor are we talking about abuse of the asylum system. The key point to remember is that these people have been found and accepted to be genuinely in need and have proper refugee status.

As the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar said, it is shame that the policy seems currently to be driven on the basis of the frankly ill-informed and unsubstantiated fear of a pull factor. The hon. Gentleman referred to the speech of Lord Kerr in the other place, in which the noble Lord dismissed that fear, but I wish to take the matter one step further. This country’s upper tribunal recently considered a case in relation to this matter, and the judgement was critical of the Government’s position. Mr Justice McCloskey overturned a decision to refuse the application made by a 19-year-old boy, who was recognised as a refugee when he was 16, to be allowed to sponsor his mother and brother to join him in the UK. One of the arguments on which the Government had relied in the initial decision was that it was in the public interest not to allow the family reunion application. The Government argued that other would-be child refugees

“would be at risk of trafficking and exploitation in their quest to reach the United Kingdom”—

that is the suggestion of the pull factor. In his judgment, Mr Justice McCloskey was pretty damning of that suggestion, saying that

“there is no evidence underlying”

that argument. He went on to say—I agree with him on this—that allowing reunification

“will promote, rather than undermine, the public interest in this respect.”

Mr Justice McCloskey is right, the Government are wrong, and they should think again in that regard.

Because we are talking about a small number of people and because the current system is based on what appears to be a policy premise that is unsubstantiated by evidence—that position is clearly borne out by the court, and I have seen no intrinsic or palpable evidence anywhere to suggest that a pull factor can be shown to exist—it seems to me that, although in many respects I am proud of what my Government have done, in this respect they let themselves down by taking a needlessly restrictive and, forgive me for saying so, a somewhat mean-spirited approach in relation to this comparatively small number of people. We have an opportunity to look at this again. By allowing refugee children to sponsor their immediate families, we would reduce the number of people who make irregular journeys to reach the UK. There is evidence of people sometimes making irregular journeys because they are unable to come through the proper channels.

[Angus Brendan MacNeil]

The hon. Gentleman is making a great speech. One point to consider is that over the past 18 months the Home Office has said on several occasions that it is following the progress of the family reunion Bill and talking to stakeholders—a sort of indication of change—but what has really happened, change-wise? The Home Office cannot stall on this much longer, given the body and breadth of opinion stating that the rules should change and come into line with those elsewhere, and that we should be decent to this small number of people.

[Robert Neill]

The hon. Gentleman is right. Whenever I talk to people in my constituency, whatever their political association, their gut reaction to this issue is that it just seems only fair, decent and reasonable to allow reunification. That is right and I hope the Government will think again.

The hon. Gentleman observes correctly that this has been a matter of debate and consideration in a number of places. In 2016, the Home Affairs Committee said:

“It seems to us perverse that children who have been granted refugee status in the UK are not then allowed to bring their close family to join them in the same way as an adult would be able to do. The right to live safely with family should apply to child refugees just as it does to adults.”

That must be right. If we want people who are genuine refugees to settle in this country, to integrate well with our society and to make a success of themselves, as so many of those children who were housed in Lubbock Road in Chislehurst were able to do—their stories are available in the archives of Christ church, Chislehurst—it seems to me to be only generous and decent to enable them to bring their close family, which is therefore a limited and concise number.

The Government have the opportunity to carry out a review, and I hope the Minister, who I know is a humane and caring person, will reflect on this matter. We need not put a needless stain on our reputation, which is otherwise good, by adopting such a restrictive approach in relation to this small number of children. In that spirit, I hope that the Government will think again about this matter. If this debate on World Refugee Day serves to do that, as it serves to honour the memory of the Davidsons and many others who helped people at that time, that will be a good thing and we will not have wasted our time today.

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[Bambos Charalambous (Enfield, Southgate) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter). I congratulate the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Angus Brendan MacNeil) on bringing this motion to the House on World Refugee Day. I am proud to be a sponsor of his Bill, which will be of great benefit to society in general and to the young people who need the help it offers.

[Angus Brendan MacNeil]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that, as this Parliament keeps limping on, there is certainly plenty of time for the Government to get the Bill in Committee and table a money resolution so that we can make progress? I am sure that he, like me, would like to see that happen.

[Bambos Charalambous]

It is frustrating that the Bill has stalled because the Government will not give it a money resolution, and it is very sad that we are in this situation after the Bill has passed its Second Reading. I entirely agree with the hon. Gentleman that we need to see progress.

On 9 February, I visited some of the refugee camps just over the channel with Care4Calais—a charity that distributes clothes, sleeping bags, tents and other necessities. I cannot forget the harsh conditions in which the refugees there find themselves, with little electricity or hot food, no hot water, no heating, no privacy and the constant background of cold and damp. All this is coupled with the knowledge that their loved ones still face danger back in the country they have escaped.

I heard at first hand from refugees in Calais about the life-threatening situations they had fled. For some, it was religious persecution; for others, the stark realities of war and sometimes torture. Many of the refugees were young—still in their early teens—but already they had experienced horrors in their lives that many of us would find difficult to imagine. The terrifying steps these refugees will take to escape torture and persecution are telling. I spoke to young boys who had clung to the underside of lorries, risking death for hours, and others who had been stowed in the boots of cars. I met a family who had crossed the sea in winter in a tiny dinghy the size of one of the rowing boats in St James’s Park.

We must ask ourselves what prompts people to take such extreme actions. These are not the actions of people who have the choice of a comfortable life back home, nor of people who have taken decisions lightly: no, they are the actions of desperate people who want to survive and build a better life; people who need and deserve the help of rich nations like our own.

It was clear in Calais how often it is the young men who will make the journey first in the hope that they can carve an escape route for their loved ones. One young man I spoke to in Calais told me that he often speaks to his mother on the phone. I asked him, “Does she know where you’re living now?” He smiled ruefully and answered, “She’ll cry if I tell her, so I say I’m in a hotel. I just want a good job so I can make her safe.” I asked him what brought him to the camp. Like so many others, he said that it was his family’s conversion to Christianity that effectively placed a death sentence on their heads.

We cannot sit back and ignore this kind of persecution or people’s death-defying attempts to escape, and should they make the journey safely here, we surely owe it to them to allow family reunion. Some argue that to reunite children with their families will mean taking in too many people. I am afraid that that argument is one of prejudice and selfishness. According to Oxfam, the UK has taken in substantially fewer people than would constitute its fair share. In 2018, the UK received five asylum applications for every 10,000 people living in the UK, while the European average is 14. Even at that number, over two thirds of applications are rejected. In this context, it seems nothing less than cruel to block the reunion of refugee children with their families. It is well known that doing so will condemn these children to greater likelihood of mental health problems and leave them less able to engage with society. This right already exists for adult refugees in the UK, who are able to bring their families over to join them having been successful in their asylum application. It is therefore perverse that the same right is not given to child refugees.

One of my own team in Parliament is part of a family who fled torture in Algeria in the 1960s. Her family are proud of their integration and achievements in this country: proud to be British, proud to contribute economically and socially, and proud to have done well in their chosen professions. They have thrived, but how many others are prevented from doing so because they are being cut off from their loved ones?

That brings me on to the subject of legal aid. It is now seven years since legal aid was made unavailable for family reunion cases. Although the need for family reunion has greatly increased, the Ministry of Justice has been prevented from bringing justice to refugee children. The fact that £600 million has been taken from the legal aid budget in the name of austerity has meant more isolated children, left to fend for themselves. Refugee family reunion has been described by the Government as a straightforward immigration matter, but there is clear evidence to show that this is not the case.

In its report, “Not so straightforward”, the British Red Cross argues that a substantial percentage of refugee family reunion cases are highly complex. These cases are in fact anything but straightforward. Yet because of the removal of legal aid, refugees wishing to reunite with their families must apply without legal help or must themselves pay to hire legal advisers. Of course, refugees are rarely able to hire solicitors or legal advisers on their own due to financial insecurity. Instead, they are left to navigate a fiendishly complicated system that sometimes requires DNA evidence and documents that have been long since destroyed in the rush to escape war or torture.

If we are to be the open, civilised and tolerant country that we aspire to be, we urgently need to make refugee family reunion possible. Part of this would include the Ministry of Justice committing to a statutory funding regime for legal assistance for refugee family reunion cases. We cannot pass by on the other side. It is time as a nation that we behaved like the good Samaritan we should be and took family reunion seriously.

[Gill Furniss (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)]

Today marks World Refugee Day. I am proud to represent Brightside and Hillsborough in Sheffield. We have a proud legacy of welcoming and supporting refugees over many decades. My city was the first “city of sanctuary”, established more than a decade ago. We are home to a vulnerable person relocation scheme. I am pleased that our Labour council has recommitted to the scheme until 2020, and hopefully beyond. Yet the scale of the challenge is enormous. Globally, there are 25 million people who are refugees and 68.5 million forcibly displaced from their homes due to war, persecution or environmental catastrophe. Today we are reminded of their plight and suffering, but also recognise the enormous contribution that refugees make here in the UK and beyond.

In March 2018, I stood before the House to deliver a speech in favour of the Second Reading of the private Member’s Bill on family reunion introduced by the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Angus Brendan MacNeil). I explained that I supported the Bill for all the refugee and migrant constituents in Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough, and for their loved ones who were unable to join them in the UK. I talked about my constituent Abdul—a young man from Syria who had settled in Sheffield after completing his degree there. Abdul attempted to rejoin his family in Syria, facing many dangerous situations along the way. It quickly became apparent to him that a reunion in Syria would not be possible due to the ongoing war, so he returned to the UK. On his return, Abdul made every effort to ensure that his family would join him safely in the country he now called his home. He sought help from every agency and organisation available to him to be able to be reunited with his family as quickly as possible. Despite his efforts, and compliance with the Home Office guidance and procedures, the process proved to be painfully slow and disappointing. It was an arduous journey for Abdul, separated from his elderly parents who had serious health problems for over 11 years while the request for reunion was dealt with.

I am very pleased that after that speech and following my plea to the Minister, Abdul and his family were finally reunited. I met the family a few weeks after they had arrived safely. It is fair to say that it was an emotional day for us all. Both I and his mother cried. I would like to place on record my sincere gratitude to the Immigration Minister, who responded swiftly to my request and was able to assist Abdul and his family. However, while Home Office policy can be useful in exceptional scenarios like that of Abdul and his family, I am afraid it is not good enough that families are still suffering, proving that the system is not fit for purpose—and the cases continue to come forward.

Only recently I have been approached with another deeply worrying case. Ms Sermani is a Syrian refugee, too, who came to the UK through family reunion to join her husband. She was separated from her children, aged six and 10, while undertaking the extremely dangerous journey to safety. Four years have now passed, and we are aware that the children, now 10 and 14, are currently living in Turkey. Their biological father disappeared during the war, and his whereabouts are not known. It is quite possible that he will have lost his life during the conflict in Syria.

It has been four desperately sad years since Ms Sermani has seen her young children. I cannot begin to imagine what it must feel like to live with so much distance between them. Despite her numerous attempts to bring them to the UK, she has had no success. I have been informed by the Home Office that under current rules, as she came to the UK under her husband’s refugee status, she does not have refugee status in her own right. This means that she cannot bring her children to join her through a family reunion application. Her husband is unable to make the application for them to reunite under his status as he is not their biological father. It is beyond shocking that we are confronted with this situation. Due to Home Office rules, the children will remain in another country without either parent.

I raise Ms Sermani’s case, with her consent, to highlight her personal plight but also the real, practical problems we are facing when dealing with such cases. These arbitrary criteria leave people extremely vulnerable, falling through the cracks of the system. The current bureaucratic barriers are actively keeping parents separated from their children. This is not the Britain that I know and we must do better.

[Angus Brendan MacNeil]

The hon. Lady highlights an interesting case. Surely there have to be guiding principles from which the Home Office’s rules stem. The rules have not been written from those principles in a way that allows that person to come here. In the absence of rules, the Home Office should fall back on principles, and the woman being able to be reunited with her children is a case in point.

[Gill Furniss]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for those remarks. I hope that my speech today will alleviate the process for this family. I hope the Minister is willing to help, and I ask her to reconsider the application of Ms Sermani in my constituency. I also ask her to look at what more the Government can do to ensure that the guidance allows for greater flexibility in cases that do not fit the criteria directly.

Finally, as we mark World Refugee Day, I urge the Minister to allow the Refugees (Family Reunion) (No. 2) Bill to come back to the House, so that we may move forward. It is vital that the House has the opportunity to debate the Bill in Committee as soon as possible. We owe it to the many people who will rely on the passing of the Bill to be reunited with their loved ones.

--- Later in debate ---

[Angus Brendan MacNeil]

I welcome the tone of this debate; it has been absolutely fantastic. By comparison with the debate on 16 March last year, there have been no voices speaking against or running up false flags. We are trying to do something that is very unambitious—we are only trying to catch up with 25 other European countries that have no difficulty operating the modest change that we are trying to bring in. As my hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald) said, people are using dinghies and so on to cross the channel because they cannot get here legally, and we are just trying to open up the legal avenues.

I thank the many Members who have contributed, including the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill); I thank him for his knowledge, what he added to the debate and what he told us about Chislehurst and his honourable past. The hon. Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams) gave a great, wide-ranging speech. The hon. Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter) pointed out that we should not have any need for this debate. The hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate (Bambos Charalambous) related the story of his trip to the jungle. I mentioned in my speech that when we meet people, it opens up another avenue of thought. People are in the jungle because they have changed their religion—in the instance he raised, they had become Christian—and have to escape for the protection of their own lives.

The hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Gill Furniss) made a very interesting point about the case that she is dealing with involving the woman who cannot bring her children over, and I hope that the Home Office will have been listening. I do not think I have interacted with the hon. Member for Newport West (Ruth Jones) before, but she is certainly following in the footsteps of the great Paul Flynn, who was a friend of mine in the House, and I welcome the humanitarian note that she struck. The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), who demonstrated his excellent Gaelic pronunciation, gave a speech, again, driven by his humanity.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East for making very good points, and I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North (Patrick Grady) for his intervention, in which he said that we have the time in this Parliament for a lot of things to happen. I take the Minister’s point about an instruction to the business managers, who are just few yards outside the door, to enable this to happen. I hope that the business managers in the Conservative Whips Office are listening to this microphone and making sure that that happens.

I want to mention Jalal from Afghanistan, who spoke at our event on Tuesday about what it is like being a young refugee. He spoke very well in, I think, his third or fourth language, including about the difficulties that young men, in particular, face and how they can fall through the gaps. There is a lot to be done and yet to do, but we are only trying to do something very little at the moment.

Finally, I appreciate Members’ very good efforts to say the name of my constituency. I sometimes do not find it easy to say the name of Welsh constituencies, but that gives us a little reminder, by serendipity, of the language challenge that is presented to many refugees. We only have to learn two or three words to say “Na h-Eileanan an Iar” but most Members here did it very well, albeit with concentration. I thank them for that and for their contributions, and I will let you move on, Mr Deputy Speaker, as I see that you are very anxious to do so.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Lindsay Hoyle)]

That was the longest two minutes I have ever seen.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House notes that 20 June is World Refugee Day; further notes that, with record levels of global displacement across the world, many refugee families have been separated by war and persecution; welcomes that in 2018 the UK granted 5,806 family reunion visas to partners and children of refugees in the UK; and calls on the Government to introduce reforms to family reunion rules to ensure that the close relatives of all refugees in the UK have safe and legal pathways to reunite with their families in the UK.