Baroness Ludford
Main Page: Baroness Ludford (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)Refugees (Family Reunion) Bill [HL]
Baroness Ludford ExcerptsFriday 8th July 2022
(1 year, 10 months ago)
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Baroness Ludford (LD)
My Lords, I am very pleased to have the opportunity to propose Second Reading of this important Private Member’s Bill. While there are some small additions in this Bill to the version I moved last September, the core of it is unchanged—so my themes today are no different, because the case is an enduring one. I am very grateful to all the speakers in today’s debate and to all the organisations that back the Bill and have supported, encouraged and briefed us. The admirable Families Together Coalition comprises not only the Refugee Council and British Red Cross but UNHCR, Amnesty International UK and Oxfam GB, as well as others.
I and my party colleagues have long been calling for the Government to expand their restrictive rules on family reunion for refugees and those with humanitarian protection, as have parliamentarians across the political spectrum. I must put at the top of that list my noble friend Lady Hamwee, who is not able to be here today but who introduced versions of this Bill twice in previous Sessions, and whose expertise and commitment to this cause and many others in the field of asylum and immigration have inspired me and continue to do so. I hope today will start a process of fourth time lucky for a Bill to expand refugee family reunion.
The Bill will enable child refugees to sponsor their parents and siblings, as well as expand the range of family members whom adult refugees are allowed to sponsor to include siblings, parents and adult dependent children. The Bill will ensure that everyone with refugee or humanitarian protection status in the UK can access family reunion, rather than constraining rights according to the way that they arrived in the UK, and will reintroduce legal aid for family reunion cases.
In the previous Session, at Second Reading I said that the Bill was timely; it is even more so now because recent events highlight its pertinence. Families being torn apart is one of the most painful consequences of any conflict, and the current crises in Afghanistan and Ukraine are no exception. We now have the example of the Government showing that they know that refugees need their families by acting quickly—albeit following a public outcry—to introduce the Ukraine family scheme, which allows Ukrainians in the UK to sponsor a wide range of extended family members, including grandparents, aunts, uncles, nephews and nieces and children of any age. The generosity of this scheme represents the UK at our best and should be a model.
We have a proud British tradition of providing sanctuary to those in need, from the 10,000 Jewish children rescued from the horrors of the Holocaust through the Kindertransport, to the 20,000 Syrians resettled on the vulnerable persons resettlement scheme. My Bill extends this proud tradition, ensuring that all those recognised as refugees or needing humanitarian protection in the UK are able to safely reunite with their loved ones on a fairly broad definition, though not as broad as the Ukrainian scheme.
The Ukraine family scheme shows clearly that the Government appreciate the point that new refugees are better able to integrate with the support of their family. Indeed, that is one main reason why refugee family reunion is a feature of asylum systems around the world—the other, of course, being that it is simply inhumane to keep families apart. Are the Government taking the wide definition of family under the Ukraine family scheme as a spur to the consideration of expanding family reunion for all refugees?
Permitting a refugee to be with their family will greatly improve their chance of leading a stable, well-integrated life without threats to their well-being and mental health. Imagine trying to move forward with your life and work while worrying about the safety of family back home.
Research from the British Red Cross, the Refugee Council, Save the Children and others consistently shows that refugees find it harder to integrate when they are plagued by such worries. One refugee child explained: “I am unable to concentrate on my studies and when I go home, I always think about them and at night I do not sleep.” Let us not forget that family unity may also save the public purse: it costs £30,000 a year to look after a child in a residential home or foster care who might be supported by parents or other relatives if they were allowed to come to the UK. What assessment have the Government made of the ability of unaccompanied refugee children to integrate in the UK given their lack of refugee family reunion rights?
As well as events in Ukraine, reports from Afghanistan have also highlighted the importance of family. We have heard the many anguished accounts of those who could not locate their families in time to gather them together for an evacuation flight. Those refugees desperately need the opportunity to bring their families back together.
Afghan refugees received a government promise when Kabul was evacuated last August that their relatives would be able to join them but, 10 months later, 6,500 families find themselves unable to bring those relatives. One reason seems to be that they have not yet been granted a protection status. What progress is being made to institute a free, accessible family reunion route for those Afghan refugees evacuated in August 2021 who are still waiting, fearing for the safety of loved ones?
My Bill seeks to change the present rule in the UK that child refugees are not allowed to sponsor any family members, not even their parents, while adult refugees are allowed to sponsor only their partners or their children under 18 via refugee family reunion. Organisations working with refugees in the UK regularly witness the pain that people face when separated from their adult children who do not currently qualify but are still at risk or are living in precarious situations.
Rather than taking action to bring refugee families together, the Home Secretary is restricting family reunion rights even further. On 28 June, many of the provisions of the Nationality and Borders Act came into effect, including a new provision that restricts access to family reunion for certain—so-called group 2—refugees according to how they have travelled to the UK. That could mean that 3,500 people a year stay separated. The Home Secretary asks us to believe that this harshness is necessary to deter unsafe channel crossings in small boats, but by restricting family reunion, all she is doing is driving vulnerable women and children into the hands of ruthless people smugglers.
In the past year, 6,000 people have arrived safely in the UK via refugee family reunion, more than 90% of whom were women and children. Those family members may themselves be in an unsafe situation, and with family reunion restricted, some will resort to finding dangerous alternatives. This is what happened in Australia and is the opposite of what the Government say they seek to achieve. By restricting this route, the Home Secretary is forcing women and children to make a choice that no one should have to make: face indefinite separation from their loved ones or risk their lives to be reunited. If the Home Secretary were serious about combating people smuggling and protecting vulnerable women and children, she would expand access to refugee family reunion. What estimate have the Government made of a possible increase in dangerous journeys by women and children as result of restrictions on refugee family reunion in the Nationality and Borders Act?
The Home Secretary often cites as evidence of some kind of mischief that many asylum seekers who reach these shores are young men. The first thing to note about this is that the recognition rate for these claimants for asylum is an average of 75% at first instance, and half of those who appeal win their case, so the final rate of acceptance for refugee status is around 85%. The other thing to note is that of course it is their sons whom families send on dangerous journeys, both because they are more at risk at home from police violence, forced lifetime conscription as in Eritrea or recruitment to the Taliban, and because it would be inconceivable to place the well-being of a young daughter in the tender hands of the Taliban, the largely male smuggling gangs or a refugee camp. As Conservative MP and former Home Office Minister Caroline Nokes said in a debate on Afghanistan on 18 August last year:
“Our children do not suddenly become independent because they pass a day over their 18th birthday, so refugee family reunion in this instance has to ensure that those girls are able to come here. Would we leave our daughters in Afghanistan”?—[Official Report, Commons, 18/8/21; col. 1322.]
Perhaps that is a question the Minister might like to answer.
The Government have made one policy change that I welcome. New guidance on fee waivers says that the test for those applying for entry visas on family grounds, including where the sponsor is a refugee, is no longer exceptional circumstances but affordability. Although the way this is applied may be problematic, it represents progress. It is a pity that this sensible approach cannot be translated to the family reunion provisions of the Immigration Rules, which remain narrow and rigid.
The purpose of this Bill is, first, to expand the criteria of who qualifies as a family member for the purposes of refugee family reunion. Secondly, it gives refugee children in the UK the right to sponsor their family members to join them, as in almost every other European country. Thirdly, the Bill reintroduces legal aid for refugee family reunion cases. Fourthly, it requires respect for the refugee convention.
I imagine the Minister will again seek to deflect the case for this Bill by directing my attention not only to paragraph 319X of the Immigration Rules but to the discretion outside the rules. But those incorporate quite stiff fees, rely on tests such as “compelling”, “exceptional” or “unjustifiably harsh to refuse”, impose requirements that deny welfare support and recourse to public funds and offer only limited rather than indefinite leave. Discretion does not give the same certainty as changed rules.
The Government regularly trot out the argument that giving refugee children the right to bring close family to join them in the same way as adults would be a pull factor. I again quote our former European Union Committee, which in its 2016 report on unaccompanied minors said:
“We found no evidence to support the Government’s argument that the prospect of family reunification could encourage families to send children into Europe unaccompanied in order to act as an ‘anchor’ for other family members.”
Legal aid was withdrawn in 2012 on the basis that applications for family reunion were “straightforward”, but this is often not the case as they can be complex and time consuming, particularly when DNA tests or adoption cases are involved. The advantages of restoring legal aid would accrue not only to the applicant but to the Government, since the modest cost of helping the system to function better—remember that the real problem in the Home Office is the enormous backlog—would actually save money.
When refugees arrive here in the UK having left loved ones behind, reuniting with their families is the very first thing on their minds. In the words of unaccompanied refugee children supported by Kent Refugee Action Network:
“It feels as if a part of us is missing.”
I think we can all understand that sentiment, that aching hole in their lives.
To conclude, the case for a more generous approach to family reunion for refugees is based on both the humanitarian case, which I contend is very strong, and the hard-headed case that reunited families allow refugees to find their feet more quickly, integrate better and contribute more fully, to the benefit of themselves, their community, our country and the Treasury. We must do all we can to protect people forced to flee their homes to escape war and persecution, and to help them re-establish their lives in freedom and safety. That must include reuniting them with their families through safe and legal routes. If the Government are serious about strengthening safe routes and supporting women and children, they will back the Bill. I sincerely hope the Minister can give me a positive response today. I beg to move.
Baroness Ludford (LD)
My Lords, the Minister was not wrong in that last remark. I thank him very much for his reply, which I will come back to, but I want to thank everybody who has spoken in this debate. I was extremely pleased that we had the bonus of two extremely valuable extra speakers in the gap, which was wonderful.
The noble Baroness, Lady Neuberger, made a salutary correction to our historical perspective on the story of the Kindertransport. It was, of course, incomplete and she is right to focus our attention on the sadness and despair—I must get her note on the name of that book, though it will be in Hansard, obviously. I found what she said about the sense of abandonment very moving; how can children prosper in such circumstances? I was pleased that the Minister also picked up on that point. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham also raised the question of the trauma for the child in expecting them to grow up without their parents and quoted very moving testimony from Afghanistan.
The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, asked a pertinent question: do the Government want to be world leading in cruelty to child refugees? It is a fair question. She talked about not only having no one to embrace us, as refugees, in our sadness, but also having no one to share our successes with. I thought that was a very good point; it is not just about comfort but about celebration when we do well.
I am glad the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, reminded me; I second his thanks to the Library for its briefing note. Like everyone else across this House, I just think Alf, the noble Lord, is brilliant. I am pleased to serve with him on the Joint Committee on Human Rights. His efforts since 2017 especially, trying to keep the Dubs scheme going in the face of a disappointing response from the Government is nothing short of heroic.
The noble Baroness, Lady Wheatcroft, rightly reminded us of how the pandemic has highlighted our appreciation of family. Not to get noble Lords weeping for me, but I spent Christmas Day 2020 alone as a widow; I was supposed to go to a family Christmas but, because of lockdown, I could not. It was not that bad—I had loads of chocolate and silly TV and in my neck of the woods at least three shops are open on Christmas Day. I am not asking people to feel sorry for me but Christmas, if you celebrate it, is not normally a time when you like to be alone in this country; perhaps it brought home to me that sense of being alone.
My noble friend Lord Paddick talked about putting some heart back into immigration policy in this country. That is what this whole debate and the Bill are about. He reminded us of what a small fraction of total immigration family reunion—indeed, safe and legal routes generally—is. We are really not talking about some large extra cohort.
I very much welcome the support of the Labour Front Bench, expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy of Southwark. He made the very correct point that we get loads of new legislation. Like him, one loses track of all the immigration and asylum Bills, but what is lacking is any real action on tackling the criminal gangs, for which we certainly need co-operation with France and Europol. Of course, one of the great holes in the trade and co-operation agreement with the EU was any co-operation on security and justice issues, which is absurd given the history of how the UK championed a lot of the co-operation. We had the director of Europol for 10 years, for goodness’ sake, and now we have made ourselves absent. We need to put the criminal gangs out of business, and the way to do that is through safe and legal routes, of which this Bill is one.
That brings me to the response of the Minister, which was not dissimilar to the response I had last September. He tells us that the Government fully support the principle of family unity which is why they have a comprehensive policy. He tried to reassure us of the width and generosity of this policy, but he will forgive me if I am not terribly persuaded of that. The Minister talked about this Bill encompassing an extended family, but it does not really; it is quite nuclear, apart from adult dependent children. It is not nearly as wide, as my noble friend Lord Paddick pointed out, as the Ukraine family scheme. The Minister’s response to why that scheme is about extended family was to say that it is Putin’s war.
Baroness Ludford (LD)
Other wars are indeed going on, and that is why refugees are fleeing, whether from Afghanistan, Sudan or the Middle East.
I regret that the Minister trotted out the “children are being forced to travel and exploited” line. It is rather like the debates during the passage of the Nationality and Borders Act on the right to work, when the Migration Advisory Committee told us there was no evidence that the right to work was a pull factor. There is also no evidence that the ability of a child refugee to bring their nuclear family to join them is a pull factor or used as some kind of anchor. I am afraid the Government are playing into the hands of the criminal gangs by restricting safe and legal routes, of which family reunion is one of the strongest. Many of us in this House, certainly on this side, deplore that the Nationality and Borders Act brings in this restrictive treatment of so-called group 2 refugees, who are going to be in a worse situation regarding rights, including to family reunion. You cannot have it both ways; the Government say they have a broad and generous policy but have brought in an Act which deliberately restricts family reunion rights. I am afraid that what they are saying simply is not true.
Finally, the Minister talked about the burden on the public purse. But how do you know whether child refugees, or any refugees, are going to prosper? The Minister gave me a name about a war, and I will give him a name: Nadhim Zahawi. He came here, apparently at the age of 11, unable to speak any English.
Baroness Ludford (LD)
Was he five? I thought he was 11; the press always says 11. Anyway, he has obviously been a very successful businessman and politician. How do you know who will prosper? Lots of refugees often prosper more than anybody else in the country because they have a sense of having to achieve something, and they also want to give back to the country. It is not just people who come on higher-paid immigrant visas who are an asset to the country. Many people who come without a bean to their name make a huge contribution. My noble friend reminds me that a lot of the visas currently being issued are for students, who do not have any income.
Altogether I find the Government’s argument not persuasive and rather incoherent. I remain convinced, as I believe everyone else who has spoken in this debate does, that to be more generous on refugee family reunion and other safe and legal routes would help marginalise the criminal gangs, would help refugees prosper and give back to this country, and would be a win-win all round. I must stop there.