EU: Asylum Seekers

Lord Bates Excerpts

Thursday 18th June 2015 Grand Committee

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Bates) (Con)]

My Lords, this has been a powerful debate and a difficult one to listen to for any Minister with a degree of responsibility for the situation that we find ourselves in. In response to the point made by my noble friend Lord Higgins about why the Home Office is responding to the debate, essentially three departments look after the area. Had the Question been phrased in a slightly different way so that it talked about just the crisis itself, clearly my noble friend Lady Anelay would have responded on behalf of the Foreign Office. Had it been about the situations in the countries which are driving the refugees, my noble friend Lady Verma would have responded on behalf of the Department for International Development. However, it refers to the proposals on asylum currently before the EU, which is a matter that rests with the Home Office. It is also one that the Prime Minister is taking a deep personal interest in as he prepares for the European Council next week.

I undertake to meet with my noble friends Lady Anelay and Lady Verma to share with them the contributions which have been made to this debate, so that we can discuss what more can be done and how we can best serve the House in ensuring that colleagues are kept up to date. The best thing I can probably do with my contribution now, given that time is limited, is to update the Committee on the current situation as we see it and on what is happening. As I go through, I will seek to address some of the points made by noble Lords, although obviously, I may not be able to address all of them.

The noble Lord, Lord Bach, said that when you hear your words repeated back to you, it is a real challenge to reflect on what we were saying then and what we are saying now. Clearly, the position has changed. However, the UK Government have a proud record, which we have to build upon. We have resettled more refugees since 2008 than any other EU member state other than Sweden. We contribute more in overseas aid than any of the other major economies of the EU, certainly to Syria in particular, as I will come to later. Of course, the decision that was taken last year to stop Mare Nostrum was taken by EU member states as a whole. We were not the ones pushing or calling for it—it was taken through EU Council meetings and was a unanimous decision.

I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Dykes, that this situation is highly complex. The noble Lord, Lord Bach, referred to it as “grave”, and they are both correct. First, we want to continue to do all that we can to save lives. Everything that Britain can do as a moral and upstanding nation to save lives, we will do, and we should be proud of what we are doing.

The Royal Navy’s flagship, HMS “Bulwark”, has directly saved over 3,000 lives since deployment in early May. It is correct that HMS “Bulwark” is being withdrawn for essential maintenance, which I understand is quite normal in a naval context. However, I reiterate what the Chancellor of the Exchequer said yesterday, as the noble Lord, Lord Dykes, did at the beginning: we will continue to play our full part in search and rescue operations. I also underscore the words of the noble Lord, Lord Judd, who talked about sensitivity. When the captain of HMS “Bulwark” was being interviewed, I thought his sensitivity, along with the compassion displayed by naval officers deployed there, was quite outstanding and in the best traditions of our country.

Three Merlin helicopters and two Border Force cutters are also contributing to our efforts, and a number of specialist police officers are at work with their EU counterparts. The noble Lord, Lord Alton, referred to some figures. The latest figures we have are from January this year. There are two crossing areas: the central Mediterranean—

[Lord Anderson of Swansea]

Can the noble Lord say what will replace HMS “Bulwark”?

[Lord Bates]

It will be for the Navy to decide the precise vessel and how it will be deployed, and I understand that that decision has not yet been taken. However, the commitment Her Majesty’s Government have made will continue. The mission will continue and will not be disrupted. We will deliver on it. Announcements on that will come forward shortly.

Some 47,000 took the central Mediterranean crossing; of those, 10,000 were from Eritrea, 8,000 from sub-Saharan Africa and 5,000 from Somalia. So far this year, the eastern Mediterranean route was taken by 48,000; 27,000 of those were from Syria, 11,000 from Afghanistan and 3,000 from Pakistan.

We acknowledge that these operations only address the symptoms of a far greater problem. The causes of migration do not start on the Mediterranean; for some it begins when they are forced to leave their home countries because of war or persecution. However, others are economic migrants who have no right to evade the legitimate immigration controls of this country and of the European Union. That is why the Government have always said that the search and rescue operations must only ever be part of a much wider, comprehensive and long-term solution. In recognition of the importance and seriousness of this issue, and the need to address the causes of this extraordinary migration, the Government have been working closely with international partners, both bilaterally and through the EU.

At the G6 meeting on 1 and 2 June, the Home Secretary sought agreement from her European counterparts that we need to tackle the smugglers and traffickers and to address the reasons why people get on boats in the first place. I take on board the reprimand from several noble Lords that so far there seems to be little evidence that we are managing to capture the people who are desperately exploiting these people’s suffering and placing them in such dire harm.

The Home Secretary was also clear that there was an awful lot we agreed on but that the UK cannot support mandatory relocation proposals because these do not, we believe, tackle the underlying issues. We must, instead, break the link between getting on a boat and achieving residence in Europe. That link continues to play into the hands of the criminal gangs which the noble Lord, Lord Higgins, referred to, so it is vital that those not requiring protection are stopped at the EU’s external border and returned. They cannot be allowed to continue to enter illegally and then move with impunity across Europe. One area of contention here is that we would like to see that when migrants are landed in Italy they are properly registered, fingerprinted and identified so that they can be properly processed and that information can be shared across the EU. We need Governments in the region who we can work with to intercept illegal economic migrants before they reach the EU and to return them to their country of origin.

The Foreign Affairs Council will meet on Monday next week. Just this week, on Monday and Tuesday at the Justice and Home Affairs Council, the Home Secretary continued to press European partners for a sustainable response to the crisis. It was clear that longer-term efforts are essential. We need to do more to help the countries where these people come from to reduce push factors, as the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, said. We need to build stability in the region and enable people to have creative livelihoods so they can live secure and fulfilling lives in their home countries. We must also do more at source and in transit countries to pursue the criminal gangs and shut down the trafficking networks that callously trade in human suffering. This was something that we covered in the Serious Crime Act and the Modern Slavery Act, which we passed in the last Session. Increased intelligence gathering is a critical part of what we need to do to destroy their vessels before they are used.

The noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, and the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, asked what we are doing to work with our European partners. The UK is supporting Europol’s joint operation to tackle these gangs, focusing on vessels and subsequent secondary movements. The UK is a long-term supporter of solidarity across the EU in asylum matters, but we are also clear that solidarity is best demonstrated through practical co-operation with those front-line member states whose borders and asylum systems are under pressure. As the Committee will be aware, the Prime Minister yesterday met the Prime Minister of Italy. To underline our commitment to providing real, practical support to EU countries facing real pressures, the Prime Minister has offered to deploy six British officers from the National Crime Agency to Europol’s intelligence cell which aims to disrupt trafficking.

The UK also fully supports the European Asylum Support Office in co-ordinating practical, operational co-operation to address emerging migration pressures. The EU aims to build longer-term capacity in the member states most affected. To make clear our level of commitment, in the last three years the UK has contributed more resource to EASO than any other member state, contributing more than 1,000 expert working days to missions in Greece, Italy, Bulgaria and Cyprus. My noble friend Lord Marlesford and the noble Lord, Lord Desai, talked about this being a UN problem. It is. We recognise that and are working with the UNHCR on this and are seeking to address wider concerns. The situation in Syria is particularly concerning.

The noble Lord, Lord Alton, raised the words of chastisement from Sir Peter Sutherland. Given that he is such a senior international statesman, we will look very carefully at what he said and reflect on it. The fact is that 187 refugees have been resettled in the UK under the vulnerable persons programme in just over a year, and more arrive each month. In addition, we need to remember that more than 4,200 Syrians have been granted protection in the UK under our normal asylum rules since the crisis began, and that there has been additional foreign aid.

The situation is rapidly changing and our engagement with international partners continues apace. The Foreign Secretary is expected to discuss the crisis at the Foreign Affairs Council on Monday, and the Prime Minister will continue to push hard for a sustainable solution at the European Council on 24 and 25 June. I will, of course, be glad to write to update colleagues on the latest developments. I will also, as I have said, discuss this with my colleagues.

There are no easy answers to the tragic situation in the Mediterranean, but the Government remain firm in their belief that the only sustainable response to the scale of the situation is to tackle the root causes of these dangerous journeys and the organised criminal gangs behind them. The UK contribution stands comparison, we believe, to any in the world in that regard.