Unaccompanied Children (Greece and Italy)

Brendan O'Hara Excerpts

Thursday 23rd February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Alison McGovern]

As a Member of Parliament who also represents a port area of our country, I pay tribute to all those who work to keep our ports and our borders safe. I will come to the hon. Gentleman’s argument about a pull factor in a moment.

[Brendan O'Hara (Argyll and Bute) (SNP)]

Some of us were lucky enough last night to attend a screening of Ross Kemp’s documentary, “Libya’s Migrant Hell”, an outstanding, if harrowing, account of what is going on in Libya. It should be compulsory viewing for all hon. Members. Given that Amnesty calculates that one in four of the people who make that journey are children, does the hon. Lady agree that it is incumbent on us to show far more compassion and protect that most vulnerable group?

[Alison McGovern]

The hon. Gentleman makes a very good point, with which many hon. Members will agree. To put it simply, the risk to children does not end when they reach dry land. The boat may be behind them, but the danger is not. The refugee camps, especially in Greece, are overflowing, with children being left outside, cold and alone. In Greece, only about half of all unaccompanied child refugees are in official shelters. The rest are stuck in squats waiting for their applications to be processed. Even if they do find shelter, they are very vulnerable indeed. This simply cannot go on. We have a duty to help these children and we must not turn them away.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Law]

My hon. Friend makes a powerful point and I agree with him completely. In fact, I received emails leading up to today’s debate that made exactly the same point.

It now emerges that we will take only 350 children, including the 200 who have already come over from Calais. We have been told by the Minister that the door is still open, but, to be frank, the impression is that it has been slammed shut. The UK Government have stooped to a new low, targeting the most vulnerable of the vulnerable, namely unaccompanied children.

Even the timing of ditching the Dubs scheme was appalling. The Home Secretary cynically ditched it on the eve of the most recent parliamentary recess. Lord Dubs condemned the move, saying that the bad news was buried

“while most eyes were focused on the Brexit debacle”.

In her statement, the Home Secretary claimed that the scheme created a “pull factor” for unaccompanied children to make perilous journeys to the UK and, therefore, increased the risk that they would fall into the hands of traffickers. That has been touched on several times today. She said:

“we do not want to incentivise perilous journeys to Europe”.—[Official Report, 9 February 2017; Vol. 621, c. 637.]

Why would she say that? Why on earth would anyone think that we only have pull factors, when I have already described so many of the push factors? The real message that my constituents and constituents across the country are getting from this is, “Not in my back yard.” There is no evidence that there is a pull factor. In fact, relocation services that provide safe and legal routes to the UK for those seeking asylum disrupt the people traffickers, who seek to profit from smuggling desperate people across borders.

I urge the Minister not only to allow the Dubs scheme to continue, so that the UK receives at least 3,000 unaccompanied child refugees, but to increase the total number of refugees he intends to settle under the Syrian vulnerable persons resettlement programme. I remind the House that Scotland is not full up. The Scottish Government have always said they are willing to take their fair share of refugees and have called on the UK Government time and again to increase their efforts to respond to this humanitarian crisis. That is a cross-party stance that has wide public support.

[Brendan O’Hara]

My hon. Friend clearly shares my sense that the people of this country believe that we can do more and that we absolutely should be doing more to help these desperate unaccompanied children. Will he join me in pointing to the example of my local council, Argyll and Bute, which with the help of the Argyll community housing association has resettled dozens of Syrian refugees and their families on the Isle of Bute very successfully? It, among many others, stands ready to do more.

[Chris Law]

I agree with my hon. Friend. Another thing about Scotland is that, as was said by one of our famous writers, McIlvanney, it is a “mongrel nation”—a nation made up of people from all over the world. We are now part of that process.

That touches on my next point, which is that 200 public figures have even signed an open letter to the Prime Minister, branding the decision on the Dubs scheme “truly shameful”. Human rights charities have been united in their condemnation of it.

The blame for the decision to reduce access for unaccompanied refugee children seems to have been shifted by the Government on to councils, which have either refused to take part in resettlement schemes or argued that they do not have the money. The real reason is that the Government did not consult councils properly about the scheme in the first place. In London alone, at least eight councillors have signed an open letter urging Theresa May to reconsider the decision to take this lifeline away from thousands of child refugees. Councils across the country are ready to step up. I heard the point the Minister made and I will urge my council to come forward if there is space to do so, as I am sure will everybody else here.