Migrants

Debate between Lord Berkeley and Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle

Thursday 25th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, in following the noble Lords, Lord Green and Lord Lilley, I want to question one of many points from each of them. The noble Lord, Lord Green, contrasted the people coming across the channel with what he called genuine refugees. Can the Minister confirm the government figures that I have seen that say that the majority of people coming across the channel are granted refugee status? So the noble Lord’s comparison should not be made. The noble Lord, Lord Lilley, quoted the number of applications for US visas from a significant number of countries. None was on the list of the main countries from which the people crossing the channel have come. His figures are therefore entirely irrelevant to this debate.

I want to make three points in the brief time available to me. The first is about practicality. A lot of our discussion in this debate focuses on what we can do to stop the boats. Of course we do not want anyone crossing the world’s busiest shipping channel in inadequate, flimsy vehicles. However, I go back to a bleak January day in 2016 when I went to the memorial service for a 15 year-old Afghan boy called Masud who died in the back of a lorry while trying to get across the channel to join his sister here in the UK.

In the year to that death, about a dozen refugees died trying to cross the channel in the back of boats, on trains and through other vehicles. At that time— five years ago—there were almost no crossings. Those routes, through a combination of Covid and government action, have essentially been closed off, so people have taken to the boats. If the Government could somehow just snap their fingers and stop the boats, desperate people who have ties to the UK, such as the Afghan soldier documented in the Times this morning, would still seek to come here. The odds are that those routes will become more and more dangerous, and, as several noble Lords have said—I associate myself with essentially everything said by the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee—at great profit to nasty, illegal criminals.

There has been a lot of discussion about so-called pull-factors. It is worth looking at what we actually do to the refugees who arrive here seeking to exercise the right to which they are entitled. We often detain them indefinitely, in a way that no other European country does. We often reject their applications when we should not. Three quarters of rejected claims are appealed, a third successfully. I have seen the great difficulty in taking on those. I have no doubt that many more should be upheld.

Unlike many other countries, we do not allow people seeking asylum to work while their claims are being processed. According to the latest figure, from September, 67,547 claims are awaiting decision—up 41% year on year and the highest figure on record. Refugees, who are often victims of human rights abuses and have had to flee in the most desperate circumstances and in the most awful conditions, are trapped in limbo for years. They are living on an absolutely inadequate sum of money in frequently horrendous accommodation. There is no pull-factor there.

Finally, we must consider how many more people might seek to come because of our actions and policies. I will highlight two points. The first is the recent slashing of official development assistance. The other is the failure of the COP 26 climate talks, of which we were chair, to secure any funds, beyond a contribution from Scotland, for what is known as loss and damage. These funds are reparation for the climate damage caused by our actions that is impacting on people’s lives and making it impossible for them to live in their own country.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, it is difficult to follow the noble Baroness because she made so many good points. I have been following the cross-channel movement of people ever since I worked on building the Channel Tunnel 30 or 40 years ago. At that time, all we were doing was trying to keep rabid foxes out. Sadly, the situation has got much worse than that. What happened last night was a horrible example of the dangers of crossing in small boats, but, as other noble Lords have said, it was not the first such incident and it probably will not be the last.

There was a time when people smuggled themselves on passenger trains and freight trains and virtually killed the traffic across the channel at that time. They then moved on to trucks; we have heard about that. There was that terrible incident a couple of years ago when 39 people were discovered asphyxiated in a truck in Essex, having come across and been there for several days. Now, boats are used. However, it is not even comparable with the number of people who have come across the Mediterranean—not just from Libya, but from other places as well—into the European Union. There have been problems between Turkey and Greece, of course, and now between Poland, Ukraine and Belarus.

These people have one thing in common. They are coming to seek a better life from war-torn, demolished famine areas. One cannot blame them. Why do they want to come to the UK? Many noble Lords have talked about that but apart from English becoming a bit of a world language, we also do not require people to carry ID cards, and certainly do not enforce it. I can understand why the French authorities and local police are not very enthusiastic about looking after refugees and probably want shot of them. However, we must find a solution. Having worked with French authorities all those years ago, I am convinced that if the Government and the French Government tried, there could be a very good joint policy and implementation to sort this out in a humanitarian way that does not involve people going across in small boats or smuggling themselves in lorries, but gives those who are justified in seeking asylum what they want. The others would be sent back where they came from.

However, at the moment, we seem to enjoy having a verbal war with the French. It may be fishing one day and agriculture the next. There are now joint statements from the Prime Minister and the President of France that they will work together, which is nice to see but they must deliver, at Calais and the other places along the coast, as well as in this country, and come up with a policy that is fair to everyone.

The noble Lord, Lord Lilley, commented that the only people who can afford to pay the smugglers are the middle classes. He may remember that a couple of years ago, when we had our medical crisis and there was a shortage of doctors, the Government started recruiting doctors and nurses from other countries where they were desperately needed. That is unfair. We should be training our own doctors and nurses and not poaching them from other countries. If some of them are having such a rough time in Syria, for example, that they seek asylum here, so be it, but we should not be poaching them.

Trade Bill

Debate between Lord Berkeley and Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle

Committee stage
Tuesday 13th October 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]]

My Lords, I speak to offer the Green group’s support for Amendment 46 and closely associate myself with the remarks of the noble Lords presenting it, particularly the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bull.

I was going to be brief but I really want to respond to what the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, said. She suggested that the amendment seeks to recreate what was lost. No, it is trying to save what is threatened: the businesses, livelihoods and professional lives of people who have, as the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, alluded to, spent many years studying—and invested their time, energy and finances—to develop lives that are now under serious threat.

The noble Baroness, Lady Bull, in her useful setting out of the different ways in which the exchange has happened, spoke about where services are an integral component of a good being sold. We think of companies that have offered long-term service contracts for goods sold into the EU and EEA and the difficulties that they might experience in continuing those service contracts unless we have the kind of mobility framework offered here. We are now on a rescue mission.

I do not think anyone else has referred to this in detail but we have to go back to what we will be missing if we do not have the opportunity for EU/EEA citizens to come into the UK under this kind of mobility framework. There is the important area of language studies. Sadly, we have seen some documentation since the vote in 2016 showing that interest in language study, at least in our schools, has actually fallen. If we are to continue to operate in this world, where we are going to have much more complex relationships with other countries in Europe than we do now, we will desperately need those language skills. The reciprocal side of this is of course that Britons have the very valuable skill of being native English speakers that they can take around the continent and beyond.

We need to have quality of language teaching and development of language skills in the UK. Most of the teaching assistants in our schools are native speakers from other parts of Europe. These are crucial issues, so I commend the amendment to the House.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I too support the amendment. It is very important, and noble Lords who have spoken have made some very good arguments in favour of it. As we all know, free movement within the EU has been very important for education, services and other businesses as well as for people getting to know each other. It could easily and should still happen after Brexit, but that needs the Government to support the idea positively and proactively even after we have left.

Transport is of course part of mobility. It must be cheap, reliable and accessible. Although Covid-19 has caused a massive reduction in demand, it is still there and it still needs to be there. However, the situation regarding the Government’s support is still very confusing and uncertain for services and their users. I have been trying to get answers from the Government for several months on how much in loans, guarantees or grants they have given to each of the international transport sectors, by which I mean air, sea, road and rail. I have had two Written Answers saying that that information per sector is commercially confidential. Surprisingly, maybe, I got a letter from the noble Baroness, Lady Vere, this morning saying that providers have many options as to how to find money, but with no comparators.

I can see why the noble Baroness could not see tell me about comparators. If one digs a little deeper, one finds that in the maritime sector—ferries—the Public Accounts Committee recently reported that the Government had written off £85 million for cancelled ferry contracts, which included a settlement with Eurotunnel of £33 million because apparently the Government had forgotten that Eurotunnel took the same kind of traffic that the ferries do. Noble Lords will remember that the Government spent £14 million on a company called Seaborne Freight, which owned a non-existent ferry and whose terms and conditions of carriage on its website appeared to have been copied from an online takeaway.

In the air sector, airlines have had soft loans to keep them alive. The noble Baroness said in a Written Answer that the Government were

“working closely with the aviation sector to support it to ensure there is sufficient capacity”.

They have spent £3 billion on keeping the franchise railways going, and that is good, but for cross-channel rail there is not a penny to ensure sufficient capacity. According to a presentation by the High Speed 1 chief executive Dyan Crowther to the all-party rail group last week, Eurostar has received no government guarantees or support and is likely to reduce the number of trains a day that it operates, possibly to between three and five or even fewer in order to survive. These are of course low-emission services, and I remind Ministers that, according to Eurostar, if all the passengers who took Eurostar in the last few years were to transfer to air, the increase in emissions would be equivalent to 40 new Luton Airports. We love Luton Airport but the emissions from 40 of them is hard to imagine.

Is there a solution? I suggest there are many that the Government ought to adopt. The European Union Council has adopted emergency measures to give member states the opportunity to reduce infrastructure charges to zero for trains. Italy and France are thinking about it, Austria has done it and the UK could do the same; it would be nothing to do with Europe but they could do it for HS1 to reduce the track access charges to just the direct costs. That might cost HS1 about £100 million but let us not forget that the Government made about £2 billion selling HS1 to the private sector, so they could afford to do this through HS1. It would mean that all train operators got the same benefit on that loan.

I hope the Minister can provide some comfort that Eurostar services can survive, providing the availability of a cost-effective and environmentally friendly transport service for those who want to work, live or study for the purpose of trade and goods. It would be a disaster if it were forced to close.