Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict Initiative

Hannah Bardell Excerpts

Thursday 17th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Hannah Bardell (Livingston) (SNP) [V]]

Sexual violence in conflict is not inevitable. It is often an intentional strategy to further terrorise vulnerable women, girls, men and boys. Sexual violence can be committed at the hands of state-affiliated perpetrators or, indeed, non-state armed groups, including terrorist organisations. Violence against women and girls—gender-based violence—is much more common, as we have heard, in conflict zones. Victims of sexual violence in conflict are often subject to rape, forced prostitution, genital mutilation and forced marriage. These unspeakable acts and their unspeakable consequences are almost unbearable to discuss, but we must speak up, and debates like this are absolutely vital. Also vital are the funding and resources that help tackle these horrific acts and support those who face it. As a developed family of nations, we have a moral obligation to do our bit. However, the disturbing direction in which the Prime Minister and his Government have taken the UK breaks a legally binding commitment and yet again, another of his manifesto promises.

Having set up the preventing sexual violence in conflict initiative, which 155 nations joined to commit to ending sexual violence as a weapon of war, the UK has sadly rowed back. The initiative has faced significant issues, and in a report by the Independent Commission for Aid Impact in 2020 it was found that, despite initial strong leadership following the departure of Lord Hague as Foreign Secretary, senior ministerial interest waned and funding and staff resources fell. The initiative made some important achievements, it said, including creating an international protocol, that was used to secure convictions, but also had no overall strategy, did not focus on learning and failed to include survivors systematically, which we have heard is absolutely crucial.

The Government are asleep at the wheel on this important issue, and the Prime Minister, who was previously Foreign Secretary, is front and centre of this folly. The UK is the only G7 member to cut its international aid as a covid-19 response. That should shame us all, and it is not supported by a majority of Scottish MPs or, I suspect, the majority of the Scottish people. The Scottish Government recently conducted a review of its international development policy and committed to offer at least £500,000 for projects that promote gender equality in partner countries across the world. Rather than claim to be hampered by it, our review in Scotland was prompted by the covid-19 pandemic. Scotland will continue to employ whatever levers and resources it has within the constraints of this Union to ensure that it is doing its bit, but I have no doubt that an independent Scotland would take its place on the global stage as a nation ready to meet its international obligations.

As even the Prime Minister’s own Back Benchers have admitted, the aid cuts will cost lives. The UN said that more than 500 rape cases were reported in the Tigray region of Ethiopia in March this year; at least 27 cases of sexual violence have been recorded during the recent protests in Colombia, and China stands accused of organised sexual violence against its Uyghur population. These are just a few horrific examples of what people, mainly women and girls, are at risk of enduring in an already devastating and volatile situation. So the UK must not use the covid-19 pandemic to shirk its responsibilities to fight what the UN calls a global pandemic of gender-based violence. It is an outrage that the House and its democratically elected representatives were stripped of our right to vote on the cut to aid. It shows once again that this Tory Government cannot be trusted.

The people of my Livingston constituency and indeed, the people of Scotland are an outward-looking, forward-thinking and progressive nation. I cannot wait for the day when we as an independent nation on the global stage have the full basket of powers to operate and support those in need with all our might and power. Until then, we in the Scottish National party will continue to challenge the Conservative Government on their despicable actions. A change of heart and a change of actions are sorely needed. The world is watching, and the UK is at present at grave risk of doing lasting damage to its international reputation and, more importantly, to the most vulnerable people on the planet. At the very least, the preventing sexual violence in conflict initiative needs new money and new life breathed into it.

Oral Answers to Questions

Hannah Bardell Excerpts

Tuesday 15th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Martin Docherty-Hughes (West Dunbartonshire) (SNP)]

What assessment he has made of the potential effect of reductions in the UK aid budget on UK humanitarian work overseas.

[Hannah Bardell (Livingston) (SNP)]

What assessment he has made of the potential effect of reductions in the UK aid budget on UK humanitarian work overseas.

[The Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs and First Secretary of State (Dominic Raab)]

The UK will spend £10 billion in official development assistance in 2021, making us the third highest bilateral humanitarian donor country based on the OECD data.

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[Dominic Raab]

As I mentioned to my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis), the final figures, as has historically always been the case, come out not just through DevTracker, but in the international development statistics.

Let me give the hon. Member for West Dunbartonshire (Martin Docherty-Hughes) the example that I think he is searching for. At the weekend, we made a £430 million contribution to the Global Partnership for Education—a 15% increase on last year that will affect many of the countries and regions that he describes. Above all, we used not just our aid spend, but our diplomatic convening power, to get others to make billions of pounds’ worth of contributions. Not only will that encourage 40 million more girls back into education, but it will help to deliver our second goal of getting 20 million more girls literate by the age of 10.

[Hannah Bardell [V]]

The real question is: do this Tory Government even care? At a time when the poorest nations of the world need support, humanity and compassion, this UK Tory Government are turning their back. Even one of their own Back Benchers has admitted that these cuts will kill. The other G7 countries have stepped up their aid budget; the UK is the only one to cut it. It is utterly shameful. Do you know what I really want to know, Mr Speaker? I want to know how the Foreign Secretary and his Tory Government sleep at night, knowing that they have the blood on their hands of some of the poorest people in the world.

[Dominic Raab]

I think that that was pretty unsavoury from the hon. Lady, but I will tell her how we sleep at night. We sleep at night because we are the third biggest ODA budget contributor in the G7. We sleep at night because we have just made the biggest global commitment on girls’ education ever, of any Government ever in the UK. We sleep at night because we are doubling the average annual spend on international climate finance. We sleep at night because we led the way with the 100 million doses that we are providing from excess surplus because of the money that we spent on the AstraZeneca vaccine: of the doses that the poorest countries have so far received via COVAX, 95% have come from AZ. In relation to humanitarian spend, bilaterally, we are the third biggest as well. We continue to be a global leader, but I think that our constituents would be asking some pretty serious questions if, at a time when we face the biggest contraction in our economy for 300 years, we were not also making or finding savings from the international as well as the domestic budget.

Refugee Communities: Covid-19

Hannah Bardell Excerpts

Thursday 12th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House is deeply concerned by the ongoing humanitarian crisis facing refugees across the globe; has considered the secondary effects of the covid-19 pandemic on refugees and displaced persons in fragile or low-income states; and calls on the Government to provide urgent support to the world’s poorest and most vulnerable countries and communities as they deal with the covid-19 pandemic.

I am incredibly grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for allocating time for this important debate, to its co-sponsor my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams), and to cross-party colleagues who supported the call for it.

If the pandemic has taught us anything, it is that we are interconnected as a global village. We breathe the same air, drink the same water and enjoy a shared humanity that transcends borders. In that spirit, this debate addresses the plight of the world’s refugees in the face of coronavirus, and calls on the Government to do more to help.

This is not just a crisis across Asia, Africa and the middle east; it also affects Europe and the UK, as we have seen desperate people make perilous voyages across the English channel this summer and the terrible tragedy of refugees drowning at sea. These are desperate people exploited by criminal gangs and failed utterly by the international community.

As the MP for Bethnal Green and Bow, I can claim some connection to the word “refugee”.

It was originally coined by the French Huguenots fleeing religious persecution after 1685, many of whom came to Spitalfields in my constituency and left their mark on the east end’s streets, architecture and heritage.

The east end was home to many thousands of Jewish refugees in the 1880s. Jewish refugees from Portugal gave us fish and chips, and much else, of course. After 1881, Jews fleeing pogroms in the Russian empire came to the UK, and in the 1930s they came fleeing the Nazis; they included my hon. Friend from the other House, Lord Dubs, who escaped in the Kindertransport train. We owe him a huge debt of gratitude for all that he has done, and continues to do, to fight for refugee children. It is a great shame that our Government have not taken up his powerful case for our hosting refugee children.

We have accepted refugees who have fled civil war and conflict in many parts of the world, including the Ugandan Asians expelled by Idi Amin, and people from eastern Europe, Bosnia, Kosovo, Somalia and Iraq. As a nation at our best, we provided them with a welcome home, and a chance to succeed. We have benefited, of course, from their contribution to our politics, culture, economy and much else, which has added new dimensions to our Britishness. Of course, there are also the incredible contributions of many great figures, such as Karl Marx. There have been contributions to our business community, too—the founder of the Tesco family came from my constituency—and to many other fields.

The landing has not always been soft. There have always been bigots putting up barriers, and blaming and stigmatising refugees, but they have thankfully been in a minority. The UK can be proud of welcoming refugees, and of its global contribution to protecting them, for example through the role that Clement Atlee and Ernest Bevin played in the 1950s in founding the United Nations and the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. There was also, under the Labour Government, the establishment of the Department for International Development, which this Government have sadly abolished in the middle of a global pandemic. I know the Minister will say that it is business as usual, despite the merger of DFID and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office; I hope so, when it comes to protecting the poorest in the world, who need our support.

Today, the refugee crisis is on a scale that none of us could have foreseen. Nearly 80 million people—more than the entire British population—have been forced out of their home by conflict and persecution. Among them, nearly 26 million are classed as refugees, over half of whom are under the age of 18. These children and young people have been uprooted and displaced at the most important time in their life. Millions of stateless people have been denied nationality and citizenship; access to basic rights, such as education, healthcare, and employment; and freedom of movement. They are often crowded into unsanitary camps, in which, despite the efforts of global non-governmental organisations, national Governments and the international community, there are huge issues in accessing healthcare. Life expectancy is incredibly low and infectious disease is widespread in them—and this is before we take into account the impact of coronavirus.

Over half of those affected by the Syrian refugee crisis have been displaced into refugee settlements. There are camps in Chad housing Sudanese refugees; camps on the Tunisian-Libyan border; the Kakuma camp in Kenya, one of the largest in the world; and camps in Iraqi Kurdistan, Jordan and Yemen. Of course, millions of Syrian refugees are being hosted by Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey and many other countries. One of the biggest camps in the world, in Bangladesh, is for the Rohingya people fleeing murderous violence and what the UN has described as ethnic cleansing; there is an International Court of Justice case on genocide committed by the Myanmar military and Government. Millions of people are living in that camp in temporary accommodation. I saw at first hand the impact on people, the vast majority of them children and women, of the unimaginable violence and genocide committed by the Burmese military. These people cannot work, and are traumatised by what has happened, having lost everything. Homes and villages were burned down; their mothers were raped in front of them, and their fathers and the young men in their family were murdered. Those were the testimonies that I heard when I visited those camps in 2018.

There is also the Syrian crisis, which we have been witnessing for many years. I visited the Beqaa Valley in 2013, at the beginning of the crisis, and saw the impact of that conflict on the children in particular, but also on the men and women. The situation persists, and the international community has failed to force the Syrian Government to end the war. Many have argued, including the president of the International Rescue Committee, David Miliband, that the camps should be closed down, with refugees being allowed to integrate into communities and to work. We also need to do more to enable the right of return for refugees, which means that much more action is required of the international community to look at ways of dealing with the root causes of the conflicts that have often led to people being forced out of countries—whether it be Syria, Myanmar or elsewhere.

The tragedy is that the huge financial commitment required to host the sudden influx of refugees is placed on the shoulders of the countries that are least able to afford it. Eighty four per cent of the world’s refugees are living in developing countries, and seven out of the top 10 developing countries hosting refugees are considered fragile states in the OECD’s fragility framework.

Although many countries suspended their refugee resettlement schemes due to the coronavirus pandemic, many of them have now resumed, but not here in the UK. The Government have also cruelly voted down the Dubs amendment, which would have guaranteed family reunion rights for child refugees after our withdrawal from the EU. I call on the Minister today to think again and work with his colleagues in the Home Office to make that happen. If there is one way to pay tribute to the courage and determination of Lord Dubs, who was a child refugee himself, this would be the way to do it, and I hope the Minister will take that on. The UK has accepted only a small number of refugees and asylum seekers, amounting to about 0.25% of the UK’s total population. Let us compare that with what some of the poorest countries are doing in hosting hundreds of thousands, if not more than a million, refugees.

This year, on top of all the problems facing refugees, we have seen the impact of the pandemic. We know that covid-19 thrives in crowded, cramped conditions where people cannot wash their hands frequently and where medical assistance is extremely limited. We know also that the Moria refugee camp on the Greek island of Lesbos, which is one of the biggest in Europe, desperately needs assistance. CAFOD is warning about the Syrian refugee camps in Lebanon, saying that the concern for the large refugee populations is that social distancing, self-isolation and frequent handwashing are nearly impossible in the communities in which they live. This problem is widespread—whether we look at Syria, Lebanon, Bangladesh or elsewhere.

From the Greek islands to Gaza and from Bangladesh to Botswana, the pandemic is set to sweep through the world’s refugee camps, and we need to do more. The United Nations Secretary-General has said that the covid-19 pandemic

“is menacing the whole of humanity–and so the whole of humanity must fight back,”

That is surely the right approach. In early April, more than 200 Members of Parliament signed a letter to the Prime Minister, which I co-ordinated, calling for urgent support. Those calls remain necessary. Our call was for the UK Government to support the UN’s $2 billion global humanitarian response to covid, to scale up the public health response, to support refugees who need help, to deliver personal protective equipment, to work with international partners, the World Bank and the IMF to cope with the impact of covid in middle income countries, and, of course, to support the UN General-Secretary’s call for a global ceasefire, including any UN Security Council resolution for a global ceasefire, to de-escalate conflicts in many of the parts of the world that are giving rise to the forced displacement of people.

The Government have gone some way to provide humanitarian assistance, but we call on the Government to do more on this particular agenda—on ending conflicts, holding to account certain Governments who are not doing enough, and also working with the international community to provide the much-needed funding.

For many years, I have campaigned with colleagues from across the House on the Rohingya crisis, so I want to focus my final remarks on the plight of the Rohingya people who have faced, as I said earlier, incomprehensible atrocities, killings, torture, executions, mass deportations, the razing of villages, and women and girls enduring gang rape and other forms of horrific sexual violence. I heard their testimonies at first hand when I went to Rakhine state in 2013 and then in 2017 and then to Cox’s Bazar, which hosts a million refugees from Myanmar who have been persecuted.

We have just recently marked the third anniversary of hundreds of thousands of people fleeing to Bangladesh to escape the genocide, but the genocidal violence against the Rohingya in the summer of 2017 did not come out of the blue. It came from a combination of decades of persecution, systematic discrimination and the denial of citizenship and basic human rights. In Myanmar, there has been and continues to be a significant escalation of violence, and the UN continues to document violence against children, including killings, maiming and sexual violence. The recent clearance operation was among the worst, and hundreds of thousands of Muslims who live in Burma continue to be vulnerable.

Earlier this year, The Gambia lodged a case against Myanmar at the International Court of Justice. Canada and the Netherlands have formally joined the case. As penholder for Burma in the UN Security Council, the UK should follow suit, and I have called the UK Government to do so time and again, as have others. I hope the Minister will be able to take that on and follow the lead of The Gambia, the Netherlands, Canada and a number of other countries in the prevention of genocide. This particular case is so important, because it will prevent the Burmese military from committing further atrocities and prevent people from having to take their lives in their hands once again. That is why it is so important that our Government support that move.

In terms of what we do next and how we provide support to those who desperately need it, I draw attention to the calls by former Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, who has said of the refugee crisis:

“This is not a problem in far-off lands that rich countries can ignore”.

There is growing demand that the Governments of the developed world, including our own, shoulder more of the responsibility. It is in our interest. That means we need to provide funding. I know the British Government are doing some of that, but we need to go further. We need to lead the way, working with the new US Administration. We need to act to try to ensure that there is a proper global health and economic recovery plan for those countries, because that is what will stem the rise in conflict, the increase in refugees and people being forced out of their homes, and it will help to reduce conflict.

We need to double funding to the World Bank for emergency aid. We need to provide more support to the International Monetary Fund to help those countries, so that they do not end up being desperate and the economic troubles do not cause further conflict and division, thereby causing more people to suffer and end up as refugees. We also need to do more to tackle climate change, which will create more refugees. In Bangladesh, 30 million people are likely to become climate refugees, so there is a great deal that we need to do going forward.

I hope our Government will take a stronger role in the international arena. If global Britain means anything, it means our responsibility to help the poorest in the world, because it is in our interests to do so. If we do not, those refugees out of desperation will want to flee and come to the shores of Europe, and we have seen the shameful experience over recent years where we have not been able to respond as generously as some of the poorest countries have.

[Hannah Bardell (Livingston) (SNP)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing this debate. Does she agree that we must do our part in the UK, particularly when, as we did just after I was elected in 2015, this House voted to bomb Syria? I did not vote for that, but none the less, a majority of Members did. Where we are bombing countries, we need to be taking responsibility when people are displaced from those conflicts.

[Rushanara Ali]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right that many conflicts have been caused by failures of the international community, so we bear a responsibility, whether it is Iraq, Libya or Syria. We need to act. We need to provide refuge to those who end up being displaced, and also we need to take action at the international level to bring an end to the conflicts that continue to rage.



In conclusion, we need our Government to take action, not only to provide the humanitarian assistance, but to work hard to hold to account Governments who are causing persecution, Governments who are failing to protect their populations and Governments who are actively responsible for ethnic cleansing and genocide in countries such as Myanmar. We also need to take a stronger role in mobilising support in the international community to provide more assistance to those countries; refugees are among the most vulnerable in the world, and covid has exposed them to even graver danger. We must protect them against the virus. We must press the world’s Governments to step up aid programmes, end conflicts, tackle poverty and prevent the deaths of tens of thousands of displaced people around the world. If we are to tackle this pandemic, in the words of the United Nations Secretary General,

“we are only as strong as the weakest”.

This is not just a matter of humanitarianism; it is also a matter of self-interest.

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[Danny Kruger (Devizes) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Rushanara Ali) for securing this debate and for her speech, which demonstrated her own commitment to this agenda. As she said, she represents a part of London that demonstrates the proud history of this country in welcoming some of the poorest people from around their world to make their home here and make an enormous contribution to our national life. I pay tribute to her and I agree with much of what she said.

In this crisis, as a country we have turned inward somewhat; we have looked to our own problems and challenges. We have discovered our neighbourhoods and lived more locally. We have discovered, in many ways, that we are citizens of somewhere, each of us in our local lives, yet we are also citizens of the world. As the hon. Lady said, we know that the poorest people are most at risk and most vulnerable to the effects of the global pandemic. I am incredibly proud of the UK’s record this year. The Government have committed significant sums—£750 million—to the global fight against covid-19, much of it for the poorest countries in the world, with £300 million alone to be spent in the region of Syria this year.

Beyond the immediate response to the crisis, we have a very proud recent record of contributions to the imperative of building up the global economy and the economies of the poorest countries in the world. I wish to draw attention to a remark made by the World Bank last month, which observed:

“With the notable exception of the UK, which has been an absolute leader, the contributions by governments have been…flat or declining”.

It is talking about the contributions we made of nearly $4 billion to support the poorest economies in the world, which were more than those of the United States, Japan, France and many other leading countries.

Much more can be done, and I recognise many of the points made by the hon. Lady, but I wish to focus on what we here in the UK are doing for refugees, where we still have major responsibilities to fulfil. She mentioned unaccompanied children, so I wish quickly to make the point that I regret that Opposition Members persist in pretending that this Government are somehow hostile to family reunion for refugee children—that is patently untrue and it would be political madness if it were true. Their making that point is irresponsible, as it causes fear and anxiety where none is needed. The Government are absolutely committed to creating reciprocal arrangements with the EU to ensure that unaccompanied children can continue to be reunited with their families, and I have confidence that that will happen. There will be a review of the routes that unaccompanied children can take, which will be presented to Parliament and be accountable to this House.

Another area where we need more progress is on refugee resettlement more generally. I hope the House will acknowledge that the UK’s record in recent years, simply in terms of the numbers of refugees resettled here, is the best in Europe and one of the best in the world. For understandable reasons, the resettlement programme has been halted this year. I entirely understand why—the host countries have restrictions on access and travel and our local authorities are hard pressed enough as it is—but I urge the Minister to give the House and councils an update on when they expect resettlement to restart and on whether the new UK resettlement scheme, the global programme, will replace the current system for refugees from the middle east. I know that my council in Wiltshire is keen to know the plan and is looking forward to clarity.

Perhaps a more significant question than how many refugees we can receive in this country is the question of how we receive them and what sort of help we can give them. As I have said, I think our Government are generous, but they are only as generous as a Government can be. They can only give out money and give people rights to services. That is what Governments do. Refugees get free accommodation, free healthcare and free education. They also get their council tax and utility bills paid and they get a weekly cash allowance, but that is all the Government can do. We can argue that they could give more cash, but they cannot provide more than money. Human beings need more than money, especially if they are new to a country or an area.

[Hannah Bardell]

I appreciate that the hon. Gentleman probably means well, but his characterisation of the UK system certainly does not chime with the constituents I see coming to my surgery week in, week out. In particular, he talks about what this Government can do, saying that all they can do is give cash, but I disagree with that in the strongest possible terms. In Scotland, as I will set out in my contribution, we set up a scheme where Syrian doctors, nurses and health professionals have been able to retrain and come to Scotland, and they are now at the forefront of fighting the covid-19 pandemic. I am sorry, but I do not buy what the hon. Gentleman is saying. Surely he and his Government must recognise, as the hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Rushanara Ali) said in her speech, that so much more can and should be done.

[Danny Kruger]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention, and I absolutely agree that there is more that can be done than giving out money, but it is not just the responsibility of Government to do that. That is the point I want to make. We need more than welfare, and more than a roof over our heads. Our needs are higher up the hierarchy of needs than that. We need friends and we need culture. We need agency, responsibility and a sense of purpose and belonging, and we need work to do, as she says. All of this is the responsibility of all of us in society.

I want to end with another tribute to the Government, this time for the community sponsorship scheme, which was first introduced by my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) when she was at the Home Office. It was inspired by the way in which refugees in Canada have been resettled over many decades. It is an inspirational model whereby refugees—individuals and families—are received into a community by a local community group working with the local authority and the public services. They provide so much more than a house and welfare. They provide English language support and employment and training support, and they provide friends and opportunities to access local social networks, faith communities and so on.

There are two such groups operating in Wiltshire, and they are doing a tremendous job. They have supported families to integrate properly into our communities in a way that the council on its own would never have been able to do. For example, we have a tailor that we did not have before in Wiltshire, working away; we have a painter and decorator; and we have people working for the council. We also have a whole range of new volunteers making a tremendous contribution to our community. These are the new Huguenots that the hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Bow referenced. They are enriching our county and our country, and they are welcomed by local people. This is the model we need much more. These community-sponsored refugees are in addition to the 5,000 a year commitment, but I think it should be the basic model by which we receive and welcome refugee families into our country. This is the model; this is the way we will build a more integrated community and fulfil our obligations to the world.

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[David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)]

I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Devizes (Danny Kruger) for his contribution, which I think reflected a high degree of consensus on many of these issues across the Chamber, and was certainly seeking consensus on those issues where we all very much agree. I would like to spend my time focusing in particular on the impact that covid has had on three groups of vulnerable people for whom we have a particular responsibility. Those are people who have a no recourse to public funds status attached to their presence in the United Kingdom, refugee children and the people who are waiting for the recommencement—or perhaps hoping in the future for the commencement—of the new global resettlement schemes that we know are in progress at the moment.

Starting with those with no recourse to public funds, this has been the subject of a good deal of debate in Westminster recently. While there is a high degree of recognition that the NRPF status is an answer to retaining public confidence that people are not coming to the United Kingdom simply to access benefits and welfare support, in a time when there is a national crisis, as there is at the moment, it presents some particular challenges. When we begin to look beneath the surface of how the policy is operating in practice, we see the suggestion that it may be time for a reconsideration of the way we apply that policy.

We heard from the Minister during a Westminster Hall debate on this topic that, on average, 90% of requests to remove NRPF status are agreed by the Home Office and that they are agreed very quickly—generally, within a period of 28 days. I recognise that the NRPF status is complicated. For example, many people come to the UK on working visas with NRPF as a part of that. People who come as investors can be very wealthy individuals who are unlikely to face destitution, but the fact is that in the event that people face destitution, local authorities have a duty to step in and to provide financial support. Clearly, we are kidding ourselves in this place if we think that NRPF status means that there is no cost to the British taxpayer in providing that support, and we need to consider whether it is in the interests of the welfare of families who may be facing destitution as a result of that status to allow time for a reconsideration in line with what the day-to-day real practice of the Home Office has been in supporting this particular group.

Moving on to the question of refugee children, my hon. Friend the Member for Devizes is absolutely spot-on in identifying that the UK has a very honourable and long-standing record when it comes to supporting refugee children. Since 2015, the numbers coming into the care of local authorities in England has, on average, doubled. There has been a very significant rise. A lot of the political debate has focused on those referred to in the Dubs amendment, but of course the practical experience of local authorities that have been accommodating young people is that that status, clearly defined as it appears to be in the Westminster political debate, is often illusory. Young people are brought to the United Kingdom on the basis that they have a family connection here, but if that individual is not in a position to take parental responsibility under the terms of the Children Act 1989, we are moving that child from the care system of one country into the care system of the United Kingdom, so it is not in practice a process that is largely about family reunion. That is less than one in 10 of the children who are affected.

[Hannah Bardell]

The point the hon. Gentleman makes about taking children from one care system to another seems slightly inappropriate—more than slightly inappropriate—given that we are talking about countries, by and large, that are war-torn and do not even have the basic structures of health and social care, never mind a childcare system. I think it is important that we focus on the reality of the many families who are displaced and what they are leaving, and the fact that they are not necessarily coming to the UK or other western countries out of choice, but out of desperation.

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[Hannah Bardell (Livingston) (SNP)]

Madam Deputy Speaker,

“With the clothes on their backs, they came through a storm, And those that didn’t die want a better life. And they want it here.”

That quote is from the pilot episode of “The West Wing”, which I have been re-watching for inspiration and, in these strange and difficult times, comfort. They are the words of the poetic and prophetic writer Aaron Sorkin, as said by President Josiah Bartlet in the series. They sum up so well the plight and experience of so many refugees, which we have heard about in spades today.

Before covid-19, the plight of refugees across the world was of epic and catastrophic proportions. What they are now experiencing has, as we have heard, only exacerbated that horrific situation. So I warmly congratulate the hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Rushanara Ali) on securing this debate and pay tribute to her for such a fantastic and passionate speech, because it is vital that we shine a light on the experiences of refugees and asylum seekers, now and always. I have a fear that the media saturation about what is happening domestically with covid-19 means we will lose sight of their plight.

I think often of the book “In Extremis” by Lindsey Hilsum, which was about the life of Marie Colvin, who was killed in Homs, in Syria. The hon. Lady talked about bearing witness, and how she has gone to Burma and to Syria, as Members of this place and journalists should, to bear witness to the experiences, report back and come home to do what is possible to make their lives better. We can all imagine that the restrictions on journalists travelling mean that we are not hearing the stories and experiences of those at the forefront of the refugee crisis and the covid-19 crisis, as we would like to.

I pay tribute to all the Members who have spoken today. I wish to share some reflections from my childhood. I grew up in Livingston, in West Lothian, and my mother had a friend who was Chilean. He had escaped the Pinochet regime in Chile on the underside of a lorry, with literally the clothes on his back, because his name had been added to a list of those targeted to disappear. My early experience as a child was of hearing those stories and experiences, but I would imagine that they are very different from the level of the experiences we have heard today of asylum seekers and refugees, who are having to fight for not only their lives, but their health.

As the hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Bow said, we are an interconnected and global village. She spoke of the history of refugees coming to the UK, what they have brought and how they have enriched our society. She spoke of the Rohingya refugees and the way that the Myanmar Government and military have treated them, and I absolutely echo the concerns that she raises in that regard.

I may not have agreed with the hon. Member for Devizes (Danny Kruger) on everything that he spoke about, but he did say that we are all global citizens. The hon. Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi) said that we know that covid does not respect borders, but urgent supplies are needed and the FCDO response is not enough. He also referenced the merging of DFID and the FCO, which is a major error. Many of us have raised concerns and would agree with that.

The hon. Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (David Simmonds) spoke of the responsibility that local authorities feel and the resource that is needed. Again, I may not have agreed with everything he said, but he made a fair point.

We have heard about the £1 billion that the UK pledged to respond to covid-19. It includes support specifically targeted at forcibly displaced populations. Donating money to the situation is of course admirable, but as we have heard time and again, the UK is not taking its fair number and doing its bit in that regard. The hon. Member for Bradford West (Naz Shah) summed that up when she said that the UK does not even come in the top 10 countries that accept refugees. She also spoke about the insidious and discriminatory immigration policies, Ascension Island and the concerns about the language being used by those in the UK Government around “activist lawyers”. We are in a very dangerous place as a family of nations in the UK when the Government of the day in the UK talk about those who uphold the rule of law and fight for people who are marginalised as “activist lawyers”, rather than as people who are trained and trying to do their best to hold the Government to account and make sure that the rule of law is adhered to. I would caution the Government and I ask the Minister to set the record straight on that.

The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) talked about the vaccine and his concerns about that, which I share. I have a company in my constituency, Valneva, that has received UK Government funding, which I advocated for strongly. I was very pleased to hear that the UK Government were not going to put all their eggs in one basket. This is something that I discussed with the company when it was awarded that funding. It is making huge progress, but refugees are some of the most vulnerable, if not the most vulnerable, people in the world and we have to make sure that they are at the forefront of getting those vaccinations. Of course, everybody will need to get one and they will be prioritised appropriately, but it concerns me and the hon. Member that the people who are most hard to reach and most vulnerable will potentially be at the end of the queue.

I was shocked by what the hon. Member for Canterbury (Rosie Duffield) said. I had a line in my speech about the experience of refugees and of asylum seekers—that we in this country have a host of programmes where very privileged folk are put through their paces in survival skills, such as “I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here!” I mean no ill will to the programme or those endeavours, but there is something—I do not know what the words are—that does not sit well with me that we make those kinds of programmes when refugees are literally fighting for their lives to get across the world. It was Gandhi, was it not, who said that the measure of a civilisation is how it treats its weakest members, but refugees and asylum seekers are not weak. Arguably, they are some of the most tenacious, resilient, stoic folk on the planet, and I think there is an irony in the fact that these TV programmes are made.

It would not be a surprise to Scots that our First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, has said that the UK Government

“can rest assured that any proposal to treat human beings like cattle in a holding pen will be met with the strongest possible opposition from me.”

That was in reference to the Home Secretary admitting to exploring plans to incarcerate refugees on an island off the west coast of Scotland while they were being “processed”. The inhumane language used by this Government is an absolute international disgrace. I do not know about anybody else, but when this Government’s policies start looking and sounding like a dystopian TV series that I think many of us have watched, then we have huge problems.

In Scotland, we have pursued a programme called the guardianship scheme, which one of my MSP colleagues, Angela Constance, has spoken about passionately and had a debate on just last week. For the past 10 years, Scotland has proudly run the guardianship service in conjunction with the Scottish Refugee Council and the Aberlour Child Care Trust. In those 10 years, 700 children from 38 countries, speaking 40 different languages, have been supported to rebuild their lives in Scotland across 29 local authority areas the length and breadth of Scotland.

The hon. Member for Bradford West talked, as did others, about the contribution that refugees make. In closing, I want to highlight the scheme that we have developed in Scotland that means refugees can come to work in our NHS and are literally at the forefront. We must remember, as another Member said, that we are all human beings, and refugees and asylum seekers have faced some of the worst conditions, but many have skills and want to come here and contribute. That this Government stop them doing that is a shambles and shames us all. So I call on this UK Government to put fairness, decency and humanity at the heart of their immigration policy, because at present it stands as an international disgrace.

Syria: Security Situation

Hannah Bardell Excerpts

Monday 24th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[James Cleverly]

I thank my hon. Friend for his comments about my role in this. The challenge that we have with regard to Syria is the complex relationships between the protagonists on the ground. Our priority has to be to impress on the Syrian regime in Damascus, and its Russian allies, that the first thing that has to happen is that the targeting and attacking of the civilian infrastructure has to stop. We know that this is a well-established tactic. The brutalisation of civilians on the ground really has to stop: that has to be the precursor to anything else.

We respect and support Turkey’s position. We hope that the language that we have heard recently from both Turkey and Syria about a further escalation of conflict does not come to pass, and that not only will we have our enduring commitment to humanitarian support, but we will push at UN and other levels for an international response that sees a sustainable, peaceful future for the people of Syria. But the first thing that has to happen is that the violence has to stop.

[Hannah Bardell (Livingston) (SNP)]

The situation in Syria is quite simply a humanitarian catastrophe, with babies and young children dying in the freezing cold, and Assad’s regime and its allied militias using rape and sexual violence against girls, women and men as a weapon of war. Western powers must not stand by and turn a blind eye to these actions. The UK ambassador to the UN said that what the Syrian Government are doing on the ground is

“protected by a Russian veto”

and called on Russia to

“end its support for this murderous campaign and the barbaric Syrian Government.”

Russia’s indifference to human life and to its obligation to protect it must be challenged directly. Will the Secretary of State respond to calls from my right hon. Friend the Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford), who called on the UK Government in his letter on 21 February and in this Chamber on 12 February to put pressure to establish a humanitarian corridor? We need deeds, not words.

[James Cleverly]

The hon. Lady is right that the humanitarian situation in north-west Syria is intolerable. At the international level, we have sought to maintain routes for humanitarian aid going into Syria. That has to be done with international co-operation and without Russian vetoes. She reinforces my—and, indeed, the Government’s—concern about Russia’s actions on this, and we call on Russia to de-escalate and to allow humanitarian aid to reach the people who need it through as many routes as possible. That remains our position, and we will continue to push this at the international level.

Oral Answers to Questions

Hannah Bardell Excerpts

Tuesday 4th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Stephenson]

Protecting citizens’ rights in the EU is absolutely a priority for the Government. The withdrawal agreement provides certainty for UK nationals living in the EU about their rights going forward. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office is proactively engaging with EU member states to ensure full and timely implementation of the withdrawal agreement.

[Hannah Bardell (Livingston) (SNP)]

Do the Minister, the Secretary of State and the Government believe that UK citizens deserve the right to consular services and support enshrined in law?

[Andrew Stephenson]

There is currently no legal right to consular assistance. Domestic law would not improve the outcomes for our most complex cases. Even if there was a right to assistance, the Government’s ability to provide it would remain dependent on other states respecting that.

[Hannah Bardell]

I thank the Minister for his answer, but with respect I disagree. In December last year, the all-party parliamentary group on deaths abroad and consular services and assistance—which I founded and chair, and of which many of the Minister’s colleagues have been members—published its report, with 92 recommendations. We took evidence from more than 60 families from across the UK whose loved ones died abroad in suspicious circumstances or are being incarcerated against their will, and they said that they feel they are being let down by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. With Brexit set to make international co-operation harder and this Government’s cuts resulting in the reduction of more than 1,000 diplomatic staff, UK citizens deserve better. Will the Secretary of State or the Minister meet me to discuss enshrining into law—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. We must have short questions. I call the Minister to respond.