Brexit: Border Control
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park Excerpts(6 years, 1 month 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(6 years, 9 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(6 years, 9 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(6 years, 10 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(6 years, 11 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(7 years, 11 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, 3 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.