Calais: Refugees

Baroness Berridge Excerpts

Thursday 2nd November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interests as outlined in the register. This debate is tribute to the tenacity of the noble Lord, Lord Roberts, on behalf of refugees. The conditions in Calais are part of a refugee system that is under strain like never before. Those conditions are undermining public confidence in the effectiveness and humanity of the system, but another factor undermining the system in the general public’s eyes is whether it is just.

In July, after much parliamentary lobbying, the Syrian vulnerable persons resettlement scheme was expanded to allow non-Syrian nationals such as Yazidis to be selected to come to the UK. Despite much lobbying, inclusion in the scheme’s vulnerability criteria, set by the UK and given to UNHCR to apply, of religious identity or being at risk of religious persecution has been rejected.

The Home Office has recently released statistics on people from vulnerable religious groups recommended to the UK by UNHCR for resettlement. Of the 8,136 resettled in the UK in 2015-16, 70, or 0.8%, were Christians, 22, or 0.3%, were Yazidis, and 33, or 0.4%, were Shia Muslims. Therefore, only 1.5% were from vulnerable religious communities; yet 23% of the pre-war population of Syria were Christian, Shia, Alawite or Yazidi.

The violence experienced by smaller religious communities in Syria and Iraq is well known. The UN Security Council last month announced that it was establishing an international investigative team to explore the crimes against humanity committed by ISIS. Can my noble friend the Minister explain why members of Syrian and Iraqi religious minority communities are so under-represented in UK resettlement schemes, and why an individual’s religion or religious persecution has not been identified as a criterion of vulnerability?

I recognise that the devil may be in the detail and there may be an explanation for these figures, but there is a clearly a case to be answered by Her Majesty’s Government and, I might add—although it is of precious little comfort—by the United States Government. Will my noble friend the Minister and the Minister for Immigration in the other place meet interested parliamentarians to discuss UNHCR’s selection process and religious minority representation in the UK resettlement scheme? In particular, will the Minister invite the requisite senior officials from UNHCR who are in charge of delivering Her Majesty’s Government’s commitment to take in 20,000 refugees during this Parliament?

It will not be possible fully to understand what is happening without Her Majesty’s Government sitting down with the UNHCR, which operationalises the policy for them. The system appears unjust, and stopping the confidence leaking out of it requires a lengthy meeting between Her Majesty’s Government and UNHCR sooner rather than later.

Deaths in Police Custody

Baroness Berridge Excerpts

Monday 30th October 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

The Government’s response is very much empathetic to the fact that the families of people who died in custody generally feel that they have come off worse through the inquest and representation processes and the financial ability to pay. At the moment, 50% of people are entitled to legal aid, while the other 50% might feel that they are short-changed when it comes to this sort of process. More than that, however, they are also bereaved and probably in an environment that they have never been in before. The Government are alive to that, which is why they commissioned this report back in 2015. The working groups will see that the work goes forward, and it is right to do that. On the wider learning, Bishop James’s report will come out on Wednesday, which I am sure will give insight not only into Hillsborough but into the wider lessons to be learned. Every time we carry out these reviews we attempt to learn the lessons of the past and we hope that they do not happen again.

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, the report refers to the disproportionately high numbers of black men in restraint-related deaths, often in contentious circumstances. That is a serious issue because it connects so vividly with the perception many in the BAME community have of the police service. As the report recommends:

“Statistics should be published breaking down restraint related deaths by ethnicity”.


Can my noble friend please outline whether that recommendation will be accepted and, if it is, will it be recorded along with the race disparity audit statistics so that there is one central point with all those ethnicity statistics together?

My noble friend mentioned that third sector groups would be involved in the ministerial council on this issue. Is a means proposed for the ministerial council to engage with the many groups that have existed in relation to deaths in custody, particularly within the black and minority ethnic community, because of the resonance that they have, as the report outlines?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, from 1 April this year police forces across England and Wales have commenced the recording of a broad range of data following each instance in which force has been used, including the reason force was used, the injury data, the gender, ethnicity and perceived mental health of the subject involved, and the location and outcome of the incident. The use-of-force data collection system will remain under review to ensure that it continues to be fit for purpose, including through a programme board attended by the Home Office and led by the national police lead for use-of-force data. The publication of data on officers’ use of force will provide unprecedented transparency and accountability, as well as insight into the challenges faced by the police as they perform their duties. In the longer term, it will also provide an evidence base to support the development of tactics, training and equipment to enhance everyone’s safety.

Refugees

Baroness Berridge Excerpts

Wednesday 19th July 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the right reverend Prelate for securing this debate. I hope Her Majesty’s Government find the recommendations that he has outlined uncontroversial. While I still have questions for the Government, this is actually a good end-of-term report for the Home Office as far as I am concerned.

On 21 March 2016 in your Lordships’ House, my noble friend Lord Farmer and I asked the Home Office to address the injustice in the then Syrian vulnerable people resettlement scheme. Yazidis and other religious minorities were excluded, not because they were not vulnerable according to the Government’s criteria set or because they were not refugees, but simply because they held the wrong passports. Daesh persecuted regardless of the Sykes-Picot border, but Iraqi refugees were not eligible for the scheme. Many MPs and Peers in the All-Party Group for International Freedom of Religion or Belief joined in on the issue and some met with the Home Secretary, the right honourable Amber Rudd, back in March this year. We were surprised and delighted that, on 3 July, Her Majesty’s Government announced that the Syrian vulnerable people resettlement scheme had had its criteria expanded to accommodate the resettlement of non-Syrian refugees who had fled the conflict. Information that we have received from NGOs working in the region highlights that members of persecuted groups, including the Yazidis, are now eligible for resettlement under this scheme.

There is, however, also anecdotal evidence from NGOs on the ground that locally hired UNHCR staff are not accurately recording the vulnerability of refugees who have different faiths to themselves, preventing some of the most vulnerable from accessing the resettlement schemes. Can Her Majesty’s Government please ensure that, as religious minorities were targeted by Daesh, those refugees coming to the UK should at the very least reflect the religious make-up of Syria and Iraq prior to the conflict? The United States is encountering the same problem, so something is amiss with the assessment of the UNHCR. A change of policy without better implementation by the UNHCR—of which DfID unfortunately gave such a poor report in its multilateral assessment—will not achieve the result that Her Majesty’s Government want to achieve through changing the scheme in this way. There are also suggestions that these other nationalities—such as the Yazidis, who are almost exclusively Iraqi—will qualify for our amended scheme only if they fled into Syria and then had to flee again from Syria. Can my noble friend please confirm, perhaps by writing to me later, that Yazidis who fled IS but went directly into Turkey will now qualify under our amended scheme?

I am also pleased that the report by the all-party group and the Asylum Advocacy Group from July 2016, Fleeing Persecution, which looked at how the Home Office assesses claims for asylum here in the UK based on religious persecution, has been taken seriously by the Home Office. We are working with them to retrain caseworkers on handling religious persecution asylum cases here in the UK. Religious persecution is one of the seven grounds for those applying for asylum here on which a claim can be made, but it is perhaps the most complex. A baptism certificate, if you are a Shia Muslim convert to Christianity in Iran, has a totally different evidential weight than one from a local Anglican church which may mean little more than that you had a layer of the wedding cake to use up. The APPG looks forward to working with the Home Office asylum team on this task over the coming weeks and is grateful to the NGOs, faith leaders and academics who are helping the Home Office in this task.

The welcome by the Church of England through its involvement in the community sponsorship scheme—as outlined by the right reverend Prelate—is encouraging, but I would be grateful to know if Her Majesty’s Government are seeking to learn from Canada, a fellow Commonwealth country, which seems to have a very effective resettlement process and integration strategy. I trust that the recommendations from this report from the APPG on Refugees will be accepted by the Home Office. Like many people, my closest friends include many from west Africa, the Caribbean and Singapore who came here for work or education, became naturalised and stayed. But the richness of my community now also includes those who have fled persecution in the Horn of Africa, were given refugee status and then became naturalised. Their gratitude for the education and healthcare provided here to them and their children is truly humbling. If Her Majesty’s Government are minded to create a Minister for refugees, can they give serious consideration to locating that Minister in DCLG, not the Home Office? As President Macron stated, there is a profound difference between economic migration and fleeing persecution. Let us keep this separate in government departments and hopefully separate in the minds of the great, generous British public.