Unaccompanied Children (Greece and Italy)

Peter Bone Excerpts

Thursday 23rd February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Goodwill]

It is important that the Dublin process works effectively and that it takes into account the safeguarding of children. Checks must be made to ensure not only that the family connection is genuine, but that children will be cared for. Things have not worked out for several children admitted under the Dublin protocol, which is why the specified number that was set with local authorities has left some slack in the system. There are 50 places for failed Dublin relocations, and we expect that number to be a minimum.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

The Minister makes a crucial point. So many children who have come here, whether by claiming asylum or as a refugee, are put with alleged family members who are actually part of the trafficking system. That is a crucial point, and I am glad that the Government recognise it.

[Mr Goodwill]

That is precisely—

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[Mr Cox]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend. It is our duty to process the children and to deal with those who have connections and family in this country.

[Mr Bone]

Will my hon. and learned Friend give way?

[Mr Cox]

No, I must make progress, given the time.

It is our duty to find those children, and I do not accept for a moment that a single person is sufficient to make our obligation effective.

I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes) that we should be doing much more in Greece and Italy—not, I repeat, to take many tens of thousands of children, but simply to interpret our legal duty according to the spirit and manner in which this country ought to be interpreting it: making it real, practical and effective. It is the cruellest of charades to acknowledge an obligation and not to carry it out with a full heart and a full sense of responsibility.

I say to the Minister from his side of the House: let him not think that all of us on the Government side—and I do not believe, properly interpreted, many of us—would feel that we should stand aside and do nothing for those children who arrive in Greece and Italy. I do not believe that that is our party’s approach to this problem.

I ask the Minister to do more for those children in Greece and Italy and make practical and effective our obligations under international law—whether under Dubs or Dublin. We need to be seen to do more. The plight of a child, wherever they are—in Europe or the middle east—is much more important morally and legally than the kinds of arguments sometimes deployed about pull and push factors:

“Suffer the little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me”.—[Applause.]

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[Nicky Morgan (Loughborough) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Dundee West (Chris Law) and pay particular tribute to the hon. Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern) for her speech, and to my hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire (Heidi Allen) for her work and her fearless attitude to ensuring that Ministers are left in no doubt about the strength of her feelings on the matter. I also pay tribute to my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Torridge and West Devon (Mr Cox), who spoke incredibly powerfully.

As we have heard, more than 30,000 unaccompanied children arrived by sea in Greece and Italy in 2016, but only eight were transferred to the UK for family reunification, and I am told that none was transferred under the Dubs scheme. As the Minister set out, the Government have been generous in supporting refugees and those seeking asylum. However, his speech was a series of numbers and schemes, and that suggests why there is confusion and concern in the debate. There are lots of schemes and lots of numbers, and the Government could help by being much clearer about how many people are coming to the UK under which scheme. Perhaps the Chamber is not the right place for that, and Ministers could write to colleagues of all parties and continue to keep us updated. One example of the confusion is the number of Home Office staff who are in Greece and Italy. We have been given one number in meetings and another was given today. It would be helpful if hon. Members had more clarity about the numbers involved.

My hon. Friend the Member for Mid Derbyshire (Pauline Latham) talked about the responsibilities of Greece and Italy, but the point is that hundreds of children have a legal right to be in the UK and have had to continue their journey alone. They have experienced further trauma, including trafficking, sexual exploitation, forced labour and freezing and unsanitary conditions because of bureaucracy and long waiting times—often more than a year.

As we have also heard, in Calais the UK managed to deal with large numbers of children in a short time, which shows that when the political will is there, it is possible to make the systems work. I think that the Minister said—again, it would helpful if we had clarity—that the Dubs scheme has not been terminated but that the number has been set for this year. If that is the case, and the Dubs scheme will continue, that is welcome, but that should be clarified, not just for the benefit of Members but for those outside the House who show great interest, compassion and concern and who care about what is happening to the scheme.

We also call on the Government to consult local authorities on up-to-date numbers on capacity for transfer and to agree to continue consulting local authorities about their capacity for looking after unaccompanied children. The Government should consult every financial year, rather than just as a one-off.

[Mr Bone]

I am listening carefully to my right hon. Friend. She agrees with me that the money follows the child so that the local authority gets paid for it. That did not come across in the speech of the hon. Member for Dundee West (Chris Law).

[Nicky Morgan]

My hon. Friend is right that the money follows the child, as I understand it. There is money there. As Members of Parliament, we know that local authorities are under financial pressure, but a significant amount of money follows each child, so local authorities should have the resources.

It would be helpful if the Government published the number of children that each local authority has already agreed to accept so that Members of Parliament, local communities, non-governmental organisations and charities can work with those authorities to welcome the children and ascertain whether the number of places can be increased.

I urge the Minister to use Members of Parliament who have an interest in this issue. From my time in government I know that officials are sometimes reluctant to involve constituency MPs, but we are able to ask questions of local councillors and local authorities. The Minister is not listening at the moment—perhaps he will read the transcript instead—but I urge him to use Members of Parliament to interrogate their local authorities on what capacity they have offered, whether they can offer more and what more we can do to get messages back to the Home Office if there are queries, questions and a reluctance on the part of local authorities to get involved in schemes.

I pay tribute to the charity Baca in my constituency, which has long worked with unaccompanied child asylum seekers and refugees. I hope its expertise—I am sure there are many other charities like it across the country—is being used, but I fear that that is not the case. Again, it is up to Ministers to challenge the Department to use their expertise and let them respond to this crisis and need.

Other hon. Members have mentioned that there are individuals in their constituencies who have wanted to step forward to help. What is being done to make use of their desire to help?

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[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Speaker, I shall keep my speech to only an hour—no, I appreciate the guidance, and I appreciate you not imposing a time limit.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern) on securing this important debate and the tone in which she moved it. I also congratulate the previous speaker, the hon. Member for Bradford West (Naz Shah), on talking in particular about trafficking, which is the area I probably have the most expertise in and would like to touch on, perhaps at a different angle.

There was some comment earlier about not enough money being given to councils for unaccompanied children. I think the figures for this year are that £41,610 is given from central Government to local government for an unaccompanied child, which is an increase of 20% or 30% in the past year, so I do not think it is fair to say that the problem—if there is a problem—relates to money.

May I say at the outset that I do not in any way suggest that anybody who does not agree with my views does not care for the children? I have, however, been looking at the problem of vulnerable children who have been trafficked since 2005, and when we had Anthony Steen in this House, he used to talk endlessly about human trafficking when nobody would even accept that it existed. I had the great honour to follow him as chairman of the all-party group on human trafficking and modern slavery in 2005.

We lagged behind in dealing with human trafficking until the coalition Government came to power, and I give great credit to the previous Prime Minister in this regard. One of his greatest legacies was what he did on human trafficking. He set up the Modern Slavery Act 2015, and we now have an independent commissioner to challenge what the Government do in this area. I have to say that the then Home Secretary used to annoy me enormously because she would not get on and do what we wanted, but in fact she checked it all out. She worked it all out and then she did it to the letter. Now, as Prime Minister, she seems to be doing that in another field in which I would like her to press on.

This is an exceptionally complicated issue. Human traffickers are the most evil people in the world. They do not care for one minute about vulnerable children. They do not care about human life. They are quite happy to cut the finger off a child whose relative—the older child or the mother—is in this country being trafficked. They have no hesitation in executing victims in front of others, to terrify them. They are gun runners and drug peddlers, but they have worked out that they can earn far more from human trafficking.

I have always taken the view that the best way to deal with this is to stop the trafficking, rather than by looking after the victims afterwards, and we have worked across Europe to do that. I have travelled throughout Europe and to other parts of the world to discover the best ways to deal with the problem. One of the countries that led on tackling human trafficking before we did was Italy. We have to ask ourselves how we can stop the traffickers. They operate only because there is a demand.

The previous Prime Minister was absolutely right to say that we should look after vulnerable people close to the region they come from. I think that, for every 3,000 unaccompanied children we look after here, we could look after 800,000 in the region for the same cost. We have to worry about the numbers; that is incredible. If we look after them in the region, there is no need for them to be trafficked. There is an argument about whether there is a safe route. Yes, there is. We are taking 20,000 or more from the region, and that is the way to do it.

I can understand people’s feelings about unaccompanied children in Europe, but they are in safe countries. Greece, Italy and France are completely safe—

[Stuart C. McDonald]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Bone]

I am sorry, but Mr Speaker has asked us to be brief. This is an issue that we should be able to debate all day. I was making the point that that is where the help should be. We are putting money in, and other European countries should be doing the same. We should have first-class facilities in Italy and Greece. They know how to do this in Italy, because they have done it already.

I could go on, but I shall conclude by saying that there is one area that worries me enormously. The Minister mentioned it in his opening remarks. We bring certain children over here, thinking that they have a relative here. The children go to those people but they are not relatives; they are part of the trafficking gangs. The children then go into prostitution or servitude. We have to deal with that. I ask the Minister to go away and find out how many of the children we have admitted are still safe. Let us find out that figure before we bang on about bringing more children in.

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[Ms Abbott]

I agree that this is about asking, particularly post-Brexit, what sort of Britain we are: are we a genuinely outward-looking, internationalist and humanist country, or are we a country that seeks ways to avoid its moral obligations?

I have to begin by acknowledging the investment and exemplary work of Her Majesty’s Government with regard to those refugees who have stayed in camps in the region. I have visited those camps, but this debate is about the Syrian refugee children and others who are in mainland Europe. Some Members and, sadly, the Minister have implied that if we pretend that those tens of thousands of child refugees who are already in Europe somehow do not exist and do not matter, they will disappear.

I must direct the focus of the House to the tens of thousands of refugee children in mainland Europe. I contend that in narrowing the safe and legal routes from Europe for those children, the Government run the risk of acting as a marketing manager for people traffickers. I have visited the camps in France and Greece. These children may be in safe countries, as some Members have said, but they are living in horrible conditions. That is despite the best efforts and the personal kindness of—

[Mr Bone]

Will the right hon. Lady give way?

[Ms Abbott]

I have to make progress.

[Mr Bone]

It is supposed to be a debate.

[Ms Abbott]

I have listened with a lot of care to all the speeches by Members on both sides of the House and now I have to make progress in order to leave time for my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral South.

I have visited the camps in France and Greece. The children there may be in safe countries, but they are living in horrible conditions. That is despite the fact that so many local people do their best to be kind and helpful. Far from arguing, as some Members in this House have done, that providing more safe and legal routes from Europe is some kind of incentive, as if it is a choice, no one who has visited the camps and informal encampments and looked these families and children in the eye can seriously argue that they have come to Europe on some sort of jaunt and can easily be turned back. Remember that these are families and young people who have risked their lives, who have seen people die crossing the Sahara and who have then risked their lives again crossing the Mediterranean.

Of course it is true that the French Government should have done more in the past. It was because the French were so slow originally to register refugees of all ages that so many set their hearts on the UK, but let us be realistic about the conditions facing refugees in Europe. In Greece, the conditions facing asylum seekers were so dire that as long ago as 2011, the European Court of Human Rights ruled it unlawful to send people back there. Only last year, in December, did the European Commission finally decide that sufficient improvements had been made that other EU member states could start sending people back to Greece.

How far have conditions improved really? I am not so sure that they have. Last month, just weeks after the Commission said it was appropriate to send people to Greece, there were reports that three migrants in an overcrowded camp in Moria on Lesbos had died within 10 days of each other. It is thought that the immediate cause was carbon monoxide poisoning, after men sharing overcrowded tents inhaled toxic fumes from the heaters they had been forced to use in the harsh winter temperatures.

In Italy, where the number of new arrivals reached its highest ever level last year, conditions may have been worse still. Recent measures requiring the Italian authorities to fingerprint new arrivals have led to shocking abuses, according to Amnesty International. It has documented cases of the police using beatings and electric shocks to force compliance from those who are reluctant to have their fingerprints taken. So say that those countries are technically safe, but do not say that the conditions in those countries are acceptable and justify closing off one of the safe, legal routes for children to come from mainland Europe to this country when they have relatives here or other appropriate legal reasons for coming here.

On the question of local government capacity, we have heard that David Simmonds of the Local Government Association says that current Home Office child refugee funding for local councils covers only 15% of the funding costs. That is a serious matter when so many local authorities led by all parties—Labour and Conservative—are under terrible funding pressure. There has been very limited consultation with local authorities. All the evidence suggests that, given more time and appropriate funding, many more councils would step up to provide accommodation for child refugees. An absolute lack of capacity among local authorities simply has not been proven.