Refugee Family Reunion Rules

(Limited Text - Ministerial Extracts only)

Thursday 9th June 2016 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Refugees (Richard Harrington)]

I add to the small but impressive list of right hon. and hon. Members today who have said what a pleasure it is, as ever, to serve under your jurisdiction, Mr Bone. I congratulate the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) on securing this debate.

My history in the legal profession often feels inadequate in Parliament, but particularly so today. I do not compare in any way to former practising solicitors nor to someone as eminent as the shadow Minister of Doughty Street Chambers and the great office he achieved afterwards. As a mere holder of a law degree, and not a very good one, I have not looked at a law textbook since 1979, but I will do my best.

Family reunification is a serious subject that is easy to paint in terms of good and bad, black and white or evil and nice, and I thank the speakers today for not doing so—it is an easy and very cheap way to attack any Government. With that in mind, I will try to answer the points that I can answer with the same level of constructiveness. Anyone would agree that family unity is an important principle. The right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland mentioned it in terms of his own family, and I have two boys of a very similar age to his, as does the hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer). To the many of us who come from a background of people fleeing from abroad, although it was not in our generation—it was several generations ago—it is something that is passed down. When I took up my office in the Government, I did not do so lightly.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael]

That goes to the heart of the debate. It is about how we regard refuge. What does it mean to be a refugee? As a country, what are we offering when we offer people refuge? Surely it has to be more than residence. Surely it has to be some sort of security and stability. How do people get that when their family is split across countries?

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Harrington]

I would find it hard to disagree with that point. I feel, and I hope that most right hon. and hon. Members agree, that this country has a very good reputation for accepting refugees not just historically but in the present day. Although I am sure that no one would suggest that our asylum system is perfect, it has certainly become speedier, allowing people not to live in such lengthy periods of limbo by making determinations comparatively quickly. I agree that those periods can still be shortened, and I hope they will be shortened. I hope that the financial package offered by the Government for the Syrian resettlement programme and other resettlement programmes shows that the Government are committed to enabling people to live proper and decent lives once they arrive here. When refugees arrive here, I agree that hopefully it is job done on human safety, but on their leading fulfilled and proper lives it is the beginning of the end, or the end of the beginning—it is not for me to quote Churchill, or to mess it up, but I hope right hon. and hon. Members will know what I mean. It is the beginning of a process, as the Government have realised in, for example, the funding of the five-year resettlement programme. I hope that many of those refugees and their families will not need the funding, because I hope they will be able to work and get the benefits of life generally, but the Government realise that it is important that that funding is available.

I apologise to the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland; the point that I wanted to make about family reunion was that the Syrian resettlement programme is predominantly for families. More than 50% are children, but within family groups. The Government are not completely oblivious to the issue. However, I return to his specific points about family reunion. His first ask was simple compared with the others: would I meet the Red Cross and the Refugee Council? I am happy to meet them, but I do anyway. I am happy to meet them on any occasion; in fact, I would have met most of them this morning, except that I could not have got to east London and back in time for this debate.

If the right hon. Gentleman would like to facilitate further meetings, I am happy to go to them, but I assure him that the Red Cross and the Refugee Council are partners of ours in many things. I know that the Minister for Immigration met the Red Cross to discuss many of these issues today, but I am happy to do so as well.

As part of the latest review of the family reunion policy, we have listened carefully to many arguments in favour of widening the criteria and effectively creating another resettlement programme for family reunion alone. The debates in both Houses during the passage of the recent Bill, and in the wider community—including representations received for this debate—demonstrate the level of compassion felt about the issue. Unquestionably, right hon. and hon. Members have made eloquent and forcible arguments in this debate for doing so.

We recognise that families may be separated by conflict and persecution. It happens quickly, and the speed and manner of it is often not controlled. The motivation of most people is unquestionably just to get to their family in the UK. However, it is easy in discussions like these not to stress that we already do a lot of family reunification. In the last five years, there have been about 22,000 successful cases of family reunification. It is often not mentioned that in our programme for Syrian resettlement, family reunification is a criterion in its own right, quite apart from the other vulnerability criteria for acceptance.

The reunification system takes into account some of the points made by the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland. It does not involve visiting a British embassy abroad; the point has been made about how difficult and dangerous that can be. It involves registering with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and going through an interview process with the UNHCR, which I have witnessed. It is lengthy, but it is not dissimilar to the type of interview that might happen at Lunar House in Croydon or other centres in the UK. Family reunification is one of the five criteria, even without the other matters. People are then brought here on one of our charter flights and resettled with their family, with an immediate right to work on a humanitarian protection visa. That is often not mentioned in the context of family reunion, but such people are coming through the Syrian system now.

At this juncture, I would like to say in the presence of the erudite and eloquent Chairman of the Select Committee on Home Affairs, the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), who came to join us today, that the comment that the Government would probably not make its target of 20,000 during this Parliament is not correct. We are well on track, and we have recently added to the target the up to 3,000 children at risk whom we are taking under the—

[Keith Vaz]

rose—

[Richard Harrington]

The right hon. Gentleman is hoping to intervene, and of course he will, but I will just finish my sentence—or page, or paragraph, in the hope that we run out of time. Excuse my humour, Mr Bone. That is an additional 3,000 children, not just from Syria and the countries around Syria; it is from the middle east and north Africa as well, and it can include non-Syrians.

[Keith Vaz]

The Minister does not need to carry on talking, because I am rising to praise him. Universally, all those who have dealt with him have pointed out that he has done a great job as Minister for Syrian refugees. Our concern is that speculation about the target is not helped by the Government’s refusal to publish figures monthly. The Minister will know that from his last appearance before the Committee. He keeps telling us that the figures will be published in the quarterly results. However, because he is doing a brilliant job, it would help his case if he published those figures more readily so people knew of the good work that is being done.

[Richard Harrington]

I must compose myself after that intervention. I thank the right hon. Gentleman for what he said. It is true that the Home Office publishes the targets on a quarterly basis, but the resettlement targets are broken down—

[Keith Vaz]

They are not targets; they are results.

[Richard Harrington]

I beg your pardon; yes. I meant “results”. The right hon. Gentleman makes me nervous, Mr Bone. I do not know why, because he is a very nice chap and I respect him a lot. The results are published quarterly, and are now broken down by local authority region. That is significantly more information than he felt was previously available.

[Keir Starmer]

I myself have said regularly how good the Syrian refugee proposal is and how well it is working. I agree that the Minister is doing a good job there, and I have said that before. The concern is the other refugees. A Syrian child who came here alone would suffer, not being able to bring their parents here. I am increasingly concerned about that sense of a two-tier approach.

[Richard Harrington]

I have every sympathy with what the hon. and learned Gentleman says. It is a feeling that a lot of emphasis has gone into one programme but not into others. I hope to convince him—if not now, then at other times as the process proceeds—that that is not the case, but it is a perfectly reasonable point to make.

[Stuart C. McDonald]

The key question to which we would like an answer is whether the Minister will at least take away the suggestion that the current approach, in which a child at 17 can apply for reunification but there is an arbitrary cut-off at 18—is sensible. We should consider their circumstances. Did they live with that family beforehand? Are they wholly dependent on the family? Will he at least take that away and work with others to implement a more sensible rule?

[Richard Harrington]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. I point out—I was going to mention this a little further on—that there will be revised guidance on immigration rules, and many of the points mentioned in this debate will be taken into consideration. If he bears with me, I hope to satisfy him, if not in content then by showing that I am trying to answer some of the questions raised. However, I must make the point that there are already several ways for families to be reunited and the resettlement schemes are part of that.

Our family reunion policy allows immediate family members of those granted protection here or who were part of the family before the sponsor fled their country to reunite in the UK. It reflects our obligations under the refugee convention. As I have said, we work closely with the UNHCR to include the most vulnerable people in the Syrian resettlement scheme.

The Immigration Act 2016, which passed very recently, announced our intention to resettle from Europe a number of unaccompanied refugee children, mentioned extensively by all right hon. and hon. Members here, particularly the shadow Minister. Under that initiative, we will prioritise family links in the UK. A point has been made about the speed at which family reunification takes place. It has been described as far too slow, and we should do what we can to ensure that the Dublin process works far more quickly for the sake of such children, some of whom the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland has seen on his visits to Calais, Dunkirk and elsewhere. Again, that is not a point that we completely ignore.

At the moment, we are meeting many of the organisations that have been mentioned today and other member states to find ways to make this process much quicker. The Immigration Minister has been in Greece and senior officials have been to Italy and France to discuss how it is done. There is no question about it—we agree that the system has to be speeded up. That is why earlier in the year we sent a UK expert to France and why we now have a permanent secondee in the Italian Dublin unit. Shortly, we will be seconding further people to Greece. We have already offered 75 asylum and immigration experts to assist Greece in operating the hotspots; 18 have already been deployed and are working there and the rest are in the process of being deployed.

We are really looking at entry clearance timetables, including with the Red Cross, which the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald) mentioned. It is open to applicants to tell us when they want the visa to take effect—we are not going slowly. Sometimes there is the implication that we are trying to make the process go slowly to stop people from wanting family reunification.

This is a difficult field. The shadow Minister and the right hon. Member for Leicester East, the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee, mentioned people traffickers. There is not a single member of this House who could disagree with anything that has been said about people traffickers. However, family reunification is vulnerable to people traffickers.

For example, we have heard—I accept that this is just the sort of thing that people hear, but it has been heard by people on the ground—that there were 50 people on the Bosnian-Macedonian border who claimed to have the same uncle in a village in Sweden. The people traffickers actually tell people to say that they have family in different countries, even down to individuals. I hope that right hon. and hon. Members would not think that that means that I think “Oh, we shouldn’t have family reunification, because some people try to exploit it”, but it does mean that officialdom has to try to verify carefully that these are genuine family reunification cases.

[Keith Vaz]

I thank the Minister for giving way to me a second time. However, that is the problem with the Turkey deal. The deal—the €6 billion that has been given to Turkey—is a reward for Turkey receiving illegal migrants back into Turkey. Actually, the resources should be directed at ensuring that we deal with the people traffickers. We are still not able to get into Libyan waters in order to deal with the boats in the middle of the Mediterranean. Surely the essence should be to stop people being given false hope and to stop people leaving in the first place by helping the countries that are the sources of these difficulties.

[Richard Harrington]

I agree totally with the right hon. Gentleman. In one of his interventions, he mentioned children in Calais and I will concentrate my remarks on that for the moment. The simple question that he put and that was also put by the shadow Minister is, “Should children be allowed in from Calais where a link can be established?” The answer is, “Obviously, yes.”

The impression given in the media—although not by the speakers today; there is no intention to mislead Parliament—is that we are seeing children in Calais and thinking, “How can we stop them from coming to the UK?” That is not the case. That is why the Government have invested a lot of time and effort working with France. Our officials regularly meet French officials and there are discussions at all levels about how to make this quick. There is now a permanent official contact committee. Since one of our officials was seconded to the French interior ministry, the speed has grown significantly—there is no question about it. The numbers may appear small—

[Stuart C. McDonald]

rose—

[Richard Harrington]

I will just finish my sentence and then I will happily accept the hon. Gentleman’s intervention.

More than 30 children were accepted between January and April. Many people say that that is totally inadequate and that things are moving at a snail’s pace, but they are speeding up; there is absolutely no question about that. There are many cases now in train and transfers can happen within weeks; there is often an implication that it is months, or even longer.

However, under Dublin, the children need to apply for asylum in France. There is a French NGO that the Government work closely with, called Terre d’Asile; my French is appalling, Mr Bone, for which I apologise. It is funded by the French Government, with our help, to help us to do this. No one child or adult need remain in those camps, but it is impossible to know how many children there are who fall within this. Whether there are 50, 100 or 150, the numbers do not matter to us, because we want to get them processed quickly.

There is lots of speculation about numbers; it is very easy for very good organisations and very well-meaning organisations to come up with numbers. There have been surveys and there has been sampling. However, it is our job to ensure that those children who do qualify understand the process and that the process is explained by people who can speak to them in their own language and in a simple manner. I understand that there is a lot of fear among the children about the French authorities and other authorities. In the countries that these children come from, people do not think of authorities in the way that people think of authorities in this country. So there is work to be done. However, the British Government are doing a lot to work with the French authorities. We must remember that they are in France; we are operating overseas and our officials are still UK officials. They are not French officials and we cannot ignore the fact that they are in France.

I apologise to the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East; I will give way to him now.

[Stuart C. McDonald]

I am grateful to the Minister for giving way. He has given welcome reassurances that the process of taking children from Calais and Dunkirk has been speeding up. Other Ministers—including, indeed, the Home Secretary—have given such assurances as well. However, when Members submit written questions that ask for hard numbers and processing times, we keep getting answers that say those cannot be provided. An excellent report from the Home Affairs Committee has asked for that sort of information to be made available. Will the Minister encourage his colleagues to ensure that it is made available, so that we can check that these assurances are worth listening to?

[Richard Harrington]

The hon. Gentleman is asking, “Will I encourage my colleagues to disclose as much information as they possibly can?” I think the answer is, “Absolutely. Yes, I will.” I hope that the right hon. Member for Leicester East would agree that more numbers are forthcoming than was traditional under previous Governments, when there was significantly less information on the subject.

Over the last five years, the rate of family reunification has been 4,000 to 5,000 per year, but I see that increasing with the different schemes that are happening. It is for our Government to help the other Governments in mainland Europe to provide the machinery, so that we can resettle those people more quickly.

One could argue that the Governments of mainland Europe have been so overwhelmed by the numbers that they have not been able to process the unaccompanied children for family reunification. Again, I do not think that that is down to lack of will. I just think that the numbers have completely overwhelmed them. From our end, it is important that we do everything that we can to help them to catch up.

I will go on to the points that have been made about the immigration rules, which enable British citizens and people settled in the UK to sponsor their spouse or partner and children under 18 to join them here. Obviously, they have to make the appropriate entry clearance application and meet the relevant criteria. That is our international obligation. The rules allow those with refugee leave or humanitarian protection status to sponsor a spouse or partner with whom they have formed a relationship after they fled their country of origin. The rules are wider than many would think, but I accept that they are not as wide as many would want. They were strengthened in the previous Parliament. The Government do not accept that the rules are unfair. We believe that they have the right impact and help to restore public confidence in this country in the immigration system.

An important point that was raised several times this afternoon—

[Mr Alistair Carmichael]

Will the Minister give way?

[Richard Harrington]

I will just finish this sentence; it may answer the right hon. Gentleman’s question. An important point was raised not about the immigration rules but about those cases outside the rules. The argument has been put forward that, although it is legally within the discretion of officials to go outside the rules, they have not been exercising that discretion. That point has been made several times; my English probably made it sound more cumbersome than I expected it to. Just to reiterate, the point is that there is a power to go outside the immigration rules, but it has not been used a lot. That point was made several times this afternoon. In the next few weeks, the Government will publish a clarification of the immigration rules. I hope that the points where discretion can be and is applied are made clearer. That will help applicants, as well as officials dealing with this.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael]

I understand why the Minister made reference to restoring public confidence in the immigration system, but to pick up the point that the shadow Minister made, conflating refugee and asylum issues with the wider immigration system is not a helpful way of proceeding and does not help public understanding. I understand exactly why the Minister said what he said, but it was a good illustration of the shadow Minister’s point.

[Richard Harrington]

I understand the argument that when immigration figures are published, they should exclude refugees and asylum seekers. It is an arguable case, but those people should surely be included within the net number of people coming into the country. For whatever reason those people come, they are still people coming into the country. In my opinion, that does not in any way take away from the validity of us taking people from the situations they find themselves in abroad.

[Keir Starmer]

It is not just about the inclusion of these people in the number; it is also about having a policy driven by one thing—driving that net migration number down. That is wrong when it comes to refugees, and that is why they should be taken out and looked at separately. The number is self-defining; it is the number of people crossing the border. That is the deeper concern here.

[Richard Harrington]

I understood the point that the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland was making. I see the argument to separate the two figures. Those who read the detail of the migration figures—it is a small number of people, and unfortunately most of them are not publishers or editors of national newspapers—see the breakdown beneath. I am sure the right hon. Gentleman and other Members interested in the subject read that breakdown. The point is valid, but however the figures are printed or published, I am afraid the media and so, one has to accept, the general population who get their information from the media will take the number in the round. It is others who accept the breakdown.

So many things in Government are a balance. Most of us who go into Parliament, Government and public service do things with exactly the right intention. That is certainly what I have found in my comparatively short period of involvement. I do not think anyone would become a Member of Parliament or, I specifically hope, a Minister in this field if they did not have a lot of compassion for people desperately wanting to come into this country and others. Everything in Government is a balance, however, whether that is financial or in terms of having some form of policy—not everything can be an exception to that policy, but the policy has to try to allow some exceptions. I believe that the number of people coming in under family reunification from the various sources will increase significantly, but in a proper, measured way. There is flexibility within Dublin and the immigration rules to facilitate that.

I thank right hon. and hon. Members, particularly the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland, for bringing these issues before us. I am happy to meet with them or anyone else to discuss this matter.