Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park Excerpts(1 week, 4 days ago)
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Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)
My Lords, I would like to build on the point just made by my noble friend Lady Barran and add my support for Amendments 39 and 40. I wonder whether, in her response, the Minister could explain how this approach in the current Bill aligns with the move to combine mayoral authorities. It seems as if the devolution agenda is actually encouraging regions and areas to work more closely together, which seems to slightly jar with the approach currently set out in the Bill. I would appreciate the Minister putting it in that broader context when she responds.
Baroness Berridge (Con)
My Lords, I support Amendment 40 and flag—similarly to my noble friend Lady Evans—a pragmatic timing issue, which I have previously mentioned in your Lordships’ House.
Clause 3 is not a political matter. It is a well-intentioned response, as the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, outlined, to the tragic cases of Arthur and Star that led to the MacAlister review. I would be grateful, as would the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, to know whether these changes will in fact solve the problem highlighted in those two cases that led to the review.
Of course, any new Government will bring in operational and structural changes, and I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, that local authorities are dealing with the integrated care board situations at the moment and of course are preparing for perhaps the biggest local government reorganisation since that of Ted Heath.
In terms of timing, I ask the Minister why it is necessary at the moment to do the structural changes to child protection arrangements when the local authorities are dealing with other changes at the time. Many local authorities, even in times of very restricted finance, have shown that they have prioritised children’s social care, and overall, England’s local authorities are on an improvement journey, in that the “good” and “outstanding” Ofsted inspections are increasing.
Why not wait to do any further structural changes until the new devolution arrangements and local authority boundaries are in place and, as the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, stated, when there is more evidence that such organisational changes in Clause 3 will improve matters, rather than inadvertently potentially making matters worse?
I also agree with the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, in relation to the culture that might be changed here. If the family help teams do not see that child protection is part of their role, it risks the cultural embedding that has been happening over decades that is similar to a school, where what you need to embed is that safeguarding is everybody’s responsibility. You might then end up with them thinking, “It’s not my responsibility”: it is kind of like the blue light service over there, which is the child protection team. We could lose inadvertently. No one is deliberately trying to make our child protection arrangements less effective, but I do worry about the cultural loss of everybody seeing it as their responsibility, in the family help team and through into the social workers. So I ask the Minister: why not wait until you have done your local government reorganisation and do this afterwards, or maybe do it at the same time, because for the staff this is an awful lot of change in various departments of our local authorities?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
In previous groups, I have spoken at some length about the purpose and functions of these new multi-agency child protection teams and how they will be delivered as part of the existing joint and equal duty on safeguarding partners to safeguard and promote the welfare of all children in their area.
On Amendment 34, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Agnew, for his contribution on ensuring that teachers and teaching assistants have the right training to work effectively in child protection. Statutory guidance is clear that teaching staff should receive safeguarding training at induction and at least annually thereafter. My noble friend Lady Bousted was very clear about that position. The noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, was also very passionate about the need for schools to be involved in this issue, which is precisely why on Tuesday we debated the clause about education and childcare settings being key safeguarding partners, and the improved emphasis on that in this legislation.
However, despite having this assurance, I decided in the spirit of the previous discussion that we were having that I would consult an expert about whether this is in fact the case. I consulted a teacher very close to me about the sort of training that he is receiving. He told me, “Every year, we receive statutory update training at the beginning of the year. This can take most of one of our inset days and requires us to read the updates for KCSIE”—Keeping Children Safe in Education—“guidance. Then we get update training through the year, every couple of weeks in briefing, and then about once a half-term in an after-school CPD”. He is an excellent teacher, although as his mother I am completely biased, and he is in a very good school. I think this makes the point about the current position in terms of training for teachers and teaching assistants.
There is a reasonable point to be made about the education partners. Although they already have a responsibility for safeguarding, they will now also have a more explicit role in the multi-agency child protection teams. I hope I can reassure noble Lords by saying that the statutory guidance is also clear that the statutory safeguarding partners, which include the other partners that the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, referred to, should support practitioners that work with children, including through creating a learning culture where practitioners stay up to date on best practice. We are clear and confident that the education practitioner in the multi-agency child protection teams will be able to operate as a crucial link to and from education and childcare settings, ensuring that school staff are supported to work effectively with vulnerable children and the child protection teams.
The pathfinder areas have developed multi-agency workforce development plans and delivered comprehensive multi-agency training that has provided opportunities not just to ensure that practitioners have the knowledge and skills they need to deliver effective child protection but to align on shared values and build these vital cross-agency relationships. Training typically covers the reforms, safeguarding responsibilities, local practice frameworks and how different roles fit together across the system. There is both an opportunity within schools and an improved opportunity, from the role of the education practitioner in the multi-agency child protection teams, to ensure that that expertise is there.
I turn now to Amendment 38, which relates to sufficient resource and delegated functions. I spoke on this in the previous group. In fact, we have, understandably, talked about it in several groups so far in Committee. I will briefly revisit the key points. The new teams will be delivered as part of the existing joint and equal duty on safeguarding partners. I have previously mentioned the flexibility in the new measures, which enables teams to operate along police and health footprints, balanced with a sharp focus on multi-agency child protection delivery, where agencies are clear about their responsibilities and accountabilities. The noble Baroness, Lady Barran, answered her own question. Of course it would not be the case that you would have the same number of multi-agency child protection teams in an authority such as Birmingham as you would have in Rutland; that would not be logical.
I am not sure that I would characterise this system as simply adding another child protection team alongside the current ones, as I think the noble Baroness said. As I said in my explanations on the previous group in particular, the intention is very much that these teams will be the place where agencies will be able to work together in the consideration of child protection cases and issues. They are quite distinct from the child protection teams that might currently exist.
In terms of resources, safeguarding partners already agree and dedicate resources as part of their local multi-agency safeguarding arrangements, and the Government have provided £500 million to support the rollout of the Families First Partnership Programme, of which multi-agency child protection teams are a part, as I said previously.
I do not want to be churlish about this, but I am not sure I would have rolled up to this Committee at this point to focus particularly on how difficult school and local government funding is if I had spent the last 14 years supporting the last Government. Nevertheless, it is an important point that we ensure that there is sufficient funding, which is why this Government have already increased, in real terms, funding going to both schools and local government.
On the group before last, we responded to the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Bellingham, about the consequences and the process of local government reorganisation. I think I gave some reassurance on that, provided to me by my noble friend Lady Taylor.
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)
It was great to hear about the training that the Minister’s son gets—that is fantastic. Can we therefore take it that these new duties in the Bill will involve no additional training, and that everything is covered by the training that she eloquently set out? Alternatively, will there be additional costs or training implications? It would be interesting to know that. Obviously, there is an array, as she rightly pointed out, but does she foresee that there will be any additional requirements?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
Good training is already provided for teachers and teaching assistants, but my point was that the role of the education lead practitioner would both enable and need more training to be provided. I used the example of one of the pathfinders where that training had taken place. I suspect that, with those pathfinders, it would be appropriate if some of the additional money that had been made available contributed to that. I also made the point that it is already the case that statutory partners in safeguarding are providing resources for their safeguarding responsibilities. The point about multi-agency child protection teams is that they will enable that resource to be spent more effectively at the point when it will impact on children’s lives.
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park Excerpts(1 week, 6 days ago)
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The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Pitkeathley) (Lab)
I should advise your Lordships that, if Amendment 2 is agreed to, I will be unable to call Amendment 3 for reasons of pre-emption.
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)
My Lords, I rise to support Amendment 2 in the name of my noble friend Lady Barran. As we have just heard, it has a simple purpose: to allow families access to a family group decision-making meeting at the earliest possible opportunity in the child protection process. As I am sure noble Lords have seen, the Family Rights Group briefing, for instance, noted that, when a local authority issues parents with a pre-proceedings letter, concerns around a child’s welfare will already be serious and could mean that an intervention at this stage through a family group decision-making meeting is, unfortunately, already too late. The British Association of Social Workers and Coram have expressed similar worries that waiting could mean that opportunities to bring families together are lost, with difficulties having escalated too far to be addressed.
I believe that research on the ground shows that family group conferences can be effective whenever the time is right for the family—in most cases, that may well be the sooner the better. Indeed, some local authorities are already successfully offering family group conferences earlier on in the child protection process. As my noble friend outlined in her opening remarks, having a family group decision meeting earlier on would allow the wider family to more fully understand the local authority’s initial concerns, and it could— I am not saying it would—allow them to demonstrate that they were able to protect the child concerned.
I hope the Minister will look favourably on this proposal, which aims simply to ensure that families have the best possible chance of staying together if— I stress “if”—issues around a child’s welfare can be properly addressed at the earliest opportunity, or at the very least to ensure that the measures put into the Bill do not force this option to be totally closed off.
Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)
My Lords, I was a family judge for about 35 years, and I tried mostly care cases. I very much support this amendment and will make three points. First, I entirely agree with the previous speakers: hold the meeting as soon as possible, because it is unlikely that the decision to make a make an application for a care order or an interim care order comes at a very early stage. One hopes that the social workers would have been working with the family before this becomes inevitable. Consequently, the sooner the discussions can be had—and the other members of the family identified where possible—the better it will be, and it may not be necessary to have the care application before the magistrates’ court in any case.
Secondly, not only is it important to have the meeting early but there must be a degree of ability for the local authority to deal with members of the family—because, not in every case but in some cases, as the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, has said, there will be very unhappy divorce proceedings pending, whereby the parties will use the children as the arena for their attacks on each other. That is the typical sort of unhappy divorce case—fortunately not frequent, but one that occurs in care proceedings. Consequently, you may find that one or both of the parents should not at some stage be at the meeting. It is crucial that local authorities are warned, if they do not know already, and given at least, under statutory guidance, some help on how to deal with that issue—not in this Bill, of course, but in statutory guidance.
The third absolutely crucial point that the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, made is not to let a particular parent or someone with parental responsibility have the opportunity to use the meeting to delay the proceedings that are necessary. Again, it is absolutely crucial that, if a member of the family is trying to delay the proceedings, the local authority can go ahead without having the meeting. That is the one point that worries me about saying that they must have the meeting, although I think that probably, under the later part of Clause 1, it is possible not to have it. Again, in the statutory guidance it is crucial that local authorities are warned that the family meeting must not take place if, in fact, the delays are there for that particular reason.
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park Excerpts(1 week, 6 days ago)
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Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)
My Lords, unusually, I entirely disagree with what the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, has put forward by way of an amendment. It is not just overambitious—in my view, it is plainly wrong, for two reasons.
Although there is—thank goodness—a minority of almost insoluble family cases, there are other ways in which to deal with mediation. Some of the work, although not all of them do, and I do not think that a local authority should interfere in private law cases. Perhaps more importantly, there is a brilliant system started by the then Lord Chancellor, Alex Chalk, and the present President of the Family Division; I think it is called Pathfinder, but I am not entirely sure. It has been rolled out in four places. When a family starts contentious divorce proceedings, all those involved with the family—the local authority specifically, Cafcass, the police, local health people and anybody else who may be involved with the family—meet to decide whether it is a domestic abuse case, in which case it goes through a longer channel, or a case in which the parties are behaving properly but cannot agree.
In the majority of cases, as the President of the Family Division has told me—he also gave evidence to one of the Select Committees in the House of Commons on this, perhaps the Home Affairs Committee—he or other family judges get rid of the case within two hours; they are completed. It would be unnecessary and unsuitable to have a family meeting of the sort proposed. There are real dangers to it in the other cases, particularly since there are other systems. So unusually, as I very often agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, on this occasion I think that she is wrong and very much hope that the Government take no notice of her amendment.
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)
My Lords, I, instead, speak in support of Amendment 6. As we have heard, reunification is the most common way for children to leave care but, sadly, the number of children who re-enter the system remains far too high, as many reunifications break down due to lack of support. There is currently no strategy by which to support reunifying families, and 78% of local authorities admit that the support that they provide is inadequate.
A breakdown in reunification not only is tragic for the children and families involved but costs the Government around £320 million annually. Action for Children estimates that the cost of providing family decision-making support to meet the costs of all reunifying families across England would result in significant cost savings of a potential £250 million.
On the basis that this is accepted and viewed as a positive step among professionals, should be in the best interests of care for children leaving school and, finally, has the potential to provide cost savings to the Government, which could be recycled into the system, I hope that the Minister will look favourably on including in the Bill a duty to offer family group decision-making during reunification.
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, this was a very reasonable sounding amendment, then the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, took a sledgehammer to it. Will the Minister give us a little guidance on the Government’s thinking on this? When people with experience on both sides are talking it is best that we hear the whole thing, but I will be very interested in what the Government say because if the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss—probably our biggest expert in the Chamber—says there is something wrong, I would be very inclined to listen to her. But, as I said, it was a reasonable sounding discussion that brought it forward.
Lord Farmer (Con)
My Lords, I added my name to this amendment in the name of my noble friend Lady Barran because I am also deeply concerned that children benefit from the right level of expertise in the family group decision-making process. I have already mentioned Eileen Munro’s commentary on the Government’s reforms in the Times yesterday, where she warns against the shifting
“of child protection responsibilities to less-qualified family help workers. Although they offer support, many are not trained to detect hidden abuse such as psychological harm or coercive control. Supervision by overstretched social workers is no substitute for expertise, especially with workforce shortages and rising caseloads”.
These comments, although focused on a different part of the child safeguarding system, also seem highly relevant here. Bringing together family members and others who are important in the life of a child means engaging with a family system that can be highly complex.
Many here will remember the case of Shannon Matthews from West Yorkshire, a few months after the huge publicity following the tragic disappearance of Madeleine McCann. In February 2008, nine year-old Shannon was reported missing. She was eventually found in a house belonging to an uncle of the boyfriend of the kidnapped girl’s mother. The kidnapping was planned by Shannon’s mother and her boyfriend to generate money from the publicity and the sizeable reward, which her mother planned to split with the uncle when he “found” Shannon and took her to a police station.
Perhaps noble Lords are already very confused about these family arrangements, and there is no doubt that the protagonists at the centre of this case were highly unusual. I am not sure whether Shannon’s mother would have been offered a family group conference, not least because of the involvement of other family members in the crime.
When the police initially investigated Shannon’s disappearance, they had to look first at the extended family. What they found was such a complex web of interrelationships, such as children of different fathers in the same family and the same fathers in different families, that they described Shannon’s extended family tree as a bramble genealogy.
To reiterate, this was a highly unusual case, but it illustrates that kin altruism cannot be assumed. Those with a biological relationship to a child may not be committed to a child or be best placed to discuss the sensitive issues inherent in family group decision-making. The Bill already and quite rightly gives the local authority discretion not to offer family group decision-making in extreme cases, but even in dark family situations, very often there will be responsible, kind, dedicated family members who want to act in the child’s best interests. However, there will also surely be many times when it is not clear where family dysfunction begins and ends.
Those involved as family group decision-making co-ordinators must, as my noble friend’s amendment says, be independent, trained and experienced. They need to be able to spot signs of potential psychological harm or coercive control. They are a key last line of defence against future harm coming to vulnerable and traumatised children.
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)
My Lords, I support Amendment 5 in the names of my noble friends Lady Barran and Lord Farmer. I hope the Minister will agree that this is a sensible amendment aimed at ensuring that all families who need it have access to a family group decision-making meeting that is underpinned by strong evidence that it works, without being overly prescriptive.
Family group decision-making is a broad, generic term without clear principles and standards about what families can expect, and there is concern among charities and organisations supporting vulnerable children on the ground that approaches unsupported by evidence may proliferate at a local level as a result of the current drafting of the Bill.
In its briefing on the Bill, the Family Rights Group says that it is
“already seeing evidence of local authorities claiming to use such approaches, including reference to ‘family-led decision making’ to describe meetings which are led by professionals and where family involvement is minimal”.
It also points to the experience of Scotland, where a failure to be more specific and clearer in legislation about what FGDM should be offered has resulted, 10 years after it was enacted, in a third of local authorities still having no actual offer. Obviously, none of us wants to see that, and it is clearly not the intention of the Government in bringing forward this new duty on local authorities.
Brexit: Border Control
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park Excerpts(6 years, 7 months ago)
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The Lord Privy Seal (Baroness Evans of Bowes Park) (Con)
My Lords, we will hear from Plaid Cymru.
Lord Wigley
I am very grateful. Does the Minister appreciate the worries in the port of Holyhead, expressed very strongly by people from Stena Line and from the port authority itself, that there are inadequate numbers of staff to cope with the very high volumes that come from Ireland? Unless something is done urgently, there is no chance of being in a position by 29 March. Can she give some assurance to the House?
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
My Lords, this is really not appropriate during Questions. We will hear quickly from the Liberal Democrat Benches.
Lord Paddick
My Lords, the Minister talked about an additional 600 staff being recruited in 2018-19. Does she not agree that there were in fact 450 fewer full-time equivalents in Border Force in 2017-18 than there were five years ago, despite a significant increase in the number of people coming across the border?
National Debt
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park Excerpts(7 years, 2 months ago)
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Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)
This side, my Lords. I ask my noble friend to resist the siren call from the Liberal Democrat Benches—
Police and Crime Commissioners
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park Excerpts(7 years, 3 months ago)
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The Lord Privy Seal (Baroness Evans of Bowes Park) (Con)
We will hear from the noble Lord on the Conservative Benches. If he is quick, we will have time and will go over to the Greens.
Lord Cormack
My Lords, those of us who had concerns about the appointment of these commissioners are doubly concerned now because of the behaviour of the Wiltshire commissioner—and that of the Cleveland commissioner, who has sanctioned the appointment of the police chief who acted so deplorably and so manifestly unfairly. Can we not have a review of the whole system?
Gaza
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park Excerpts(7 years, 3 months ago)
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The Lord Privy Seal (Baroness Evans of Bowes Park) (Con)
My Lords, it is the turn of the Cross Benches.
Lord Green of Deddington
My Lords, as a former chairman of Medical Aid for Palestinians, I entirely endorse the remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Tonge. Do the Government realise the appalling effect of conditions in Gaza on Arab and Muslim opinion throughout the world? Do they give sufficient priority, effort and importance to tackling this abysmal situation? It has gone on for 10 or 20 years and it is appalling.
Health: Alma-Ata Declaration
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park Excerpts(7 years, 4 months ago)
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The Lord Privy Seal (Baroness Evans of Bowes Park) (Con)
My Lords, it is the turn of the Liberal Democrat Benches.
Baroness Sheehan
Primary healthcare is critical in reducing child and maternal mortality through family planning initiatives, yet DfID has failed to provide funding this year to both the International Planned Parenthood Federation and Marie Stopes International. Should DfID not have safeguarded these essential programmes for women when remodelling the programme partnership arrangements, particularly in the light of the Trump Administration’s global gag rule?
Syria: Refugees
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park Excerpts(8 years, 4 months ago)
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The Lord Privy Seal (Baroness Evans of Bowes Park) (Con)
My Lords, it is the turn of the Liberal Democrat Benches.
Baroness Sheehan
My Lords, may I ask the Minister for an assurance that, should the Kazakh peace negotiations take place, the Government will do their utmost to make sure that Syrian refugees and internally displaced persons are fully considered? While I am on my feet, can I ask him whether he could outline what role the Government hope to be able to play in the peace negotiations?
Middle East and North Africa
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park Excerpts(9 years, 8 months ago)
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Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon (LD)
My Lords, it is a privilege to follow the noble Lord. I agree with so much of what he said, most especially the fact that the Government’s concentration on the refugee camps in Lebanon is necessary but insufficient. The noble Baroness’s speech, effective as it was, nevertheless concentrated on that as a cover for doing so little in this appalling humanitarian catastrophe that Europe is now experiencing. I declare an interest as the president of UNICEF UK.
It is not just the fact that many of us regard the Government’s policy towards this catastrophe as morally deficient, rather that it is also logically totally inconsistent. Take the Government’s main argument: that if we help the asylum seekers we will encourage more. That was the discreditable argument that the Government put to us last December, when they said that if we stopped refugees drowning in the Mediterranean, the consequence would be that we would have more. It was an immoral policy and one very soon discredited, as the Government saw.
A few months into the new year, as many of us predicted, we discovered that it did not stop more coming. More came, even more came, and even more drowned. Then the Government acted. They sent Her Majesty’s Ship “Bulwark” to save them. By the way, they saved them from the Mediterranean and then dumped them on the European mainland, where they were abandoned for Europe to deal with. We got the bit that attracts all the attention—the rescue by one of Her Majesty’s ships—but Britain had no part when it came to doing something to give them a future. One presumes that the Government decided to send HMS “Bulwark” and the other naval units to save people in the Mediterranean because they were convinced of the argument that it did not encourage others. How can it be logical for the Government to say that they sent HMS “Bulwark” to save people from the Mediterranean because it does not encourage further refugees, but they will not help those crossing the Aegean because it does? These two facts seem completely inconsistent.
The Government fail to understand the true nature of what is going on when it comes to asylum seekers. The Government think that to seek asylum is a discretionary activity: that you do it if you can be helped and you will not if you cannot. The Prime Minister seems to believe that to be an asylum seeker is rather like going to the theatre—that one does not do it unless one has a ticket. The reality is that it is not like that at all. These families are living in hell. They are living with the barrel bombs of Assad on the one side and the whetted knife of ISIL on the other. You do not have to provide them with bliss for them to want to flee from hell. It is not that they are drawn to us by the welcome; it is that they are drawn away from the terrible circumstances in which they find themselves.
If noble Lords listen to the Minister’s speech, and that of the Prime Minister, they will come to a second inconsistency. The Prime Minister’s Statement—the noble Baroness used the same argument—says:
“The whole country has been deeply moved by the heart-breaking images that we have seen over the past few days”.—[Official Report, Commons, 7/9/15; col. 23.]
We know what those images were: they were that dreadful image of the body of a small child being carried up from the beach. One would think that if the Prime Minister prays in aid that tragedy his policy that follows would address it, but it does not. The Government then announce a set of policies that would have done nothing for that small, tragic figure, or, indeed, for the thousands—the hundreds at least—who still follow him and the many, presumably, who still die. If, indeed, the Government are genuinely moved by the plight of those shown in that picture—one suspects that their reaction might have been due to the fact that the picture appeared on the front page of the Sun, but perhaps that is an unworthy thought—they should let their policy address that crisis. However, they did not do so, and that was the case with the subsequent tragedies that occurred. This seems to me curious, to put it mildly.
The next curiosity about the Government’s policy is that although they have offered to take 4,000 refugees a year—Germany by the way is taking 800,000—which is rather fewer people than arrive on the Greek islands in one weekend, the vast majority of their effort is poured into the refugee camps in Lebanon. That is fine. Who can oppose that? Who can oppose providing resources for that? But here is the paradox: at a time when we are experiencing a tidal wave of asylum seekers from the tragedy in Syria, the Government put most of their energy into the camps where there are no asylum seekers at all. Indeed, those in the camps are well housed, well fed and secure. They are not comfortable; of course, they are not. Why do the Government do so much to help those who are not suffering from lack of shelter, accommodation and security, but do nothing for those who are desperate and, indeed, dying for want of those things and are tramping towards us in Europe? How can that be a logical approach to this crisis?
I sometimes wonder whether it is not the word “suffering” to which the Government object but rather “Europe”, because the one thing they will not do is anything which puts them in concert with our European allies as that would create all sorts of problems with their own Back Benches. Perhaps that, too, is an unworthy thought, but what explanation is there other than the fact that they will not contribute to alleviating a European crisis and will not join a European strategy? If that is the case, and perhaps we are right to be suspicious that it is, those terrible desperate thousands tramping across the dusty roads of the Balkans towards us are hostages of the Conservative Government’s right-wing Europhobes on their own Back Benches. If that is so, and one suspects it may be, then, irony of irony, they are hostages of the very people that the Prime Minister is hostage of as well.
Of course we should put money into these camps; it is necessary. However, it is not sufficient. Yes, we can be proud of what we have done to help those refugee camps but we should be ashamed of how little we have done—almost nothing—for the tide of asylum seekers who look to us for support and help. Here is the third odd thing about the Government’s policies. We, too, have our refugee problem. We have 3,000 banging on the gates of the Channel Tunnel. Whether that is a large or small number when measured against Germany’s 800,000 or the 60,000, 70,000 or 80,000 going to France depends on your point of view. However, this problem—theirs and ours—can be solved only within a European strategy. It cannot be solved by our acting unilaterally and alone, as we are doing. The only way this can be solved is by working together with our European partners. It is the only way it can be done, but this is the very thing the Government will not do. In not doing it, they act against this country’s best interests, diminish our Prime Minister’s bargaining power in Europe to get the kind of deal he wants and act contrary to the values of this country and against its noble traditions. In that blindness, they also miss one other fact: these refugees and asylum seekers arriving in Germany are all desperate but are not poor or uneducated. These are the educated people, the Ugandan Asians of our day. The German Government are happy to welcome them; of course, they are. Have noble Lords noticed how many of them can speak English? These people would benefit our country in the future.
I am not pretending for one second that this is not an immensely difficult problem to solve; of course, it is. It is a very difficult problem to solve. We will have to discuss it and come to measured and difficult agreements on this. Perhaps we will have to adapt some of the principles that we are now applying, but let us do so as Europeans together and keeping in touch with European principles of decency and humanity as much as we can.
We are moving into very turbulent times. This is a problem for the future as well. It is going to be much larger when global warming takes place. We have to start considering this in a more measured way than this Government are doing. I do not think there are many lights that will guide us through the years to come except our wisdom and humanity. It is a shame indeed that the Government’s policies in this matter are inconsistent, illogical, against our country’s best interests and counter to our traditions and values and I, for one, with some regret, have to say that they are morally shameful.
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)
My Lords, I advise the House that the Back-Bench advisory time is six minutes. We would be very grateful if noble Lords would consider that in order for us to finish at a reasonable hour.