Afghanistan: Child Asylum Seekers

Lord Dubs Excerpts

Thursday 10th June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Jones]

My Lords, I am sure that the House entirely agrees that this is a very difficult issue. We are in an age of migration, but we have to consider the alternatives. Unless this country is prepared to take every single individual who arrives on our shores as a result of having been trafficked through the system and to keep them indefinitely—in the end as our citizens—we have to find a humane way of returning people. These provisions are designed precisely to provide that degree of humanity and assistance to the young people who arrive here.

[Lord Dubs]

My Lords, how will the Government monitor the safety and well-being of those children who are returned to Afghanistan? Also, will the Government give an assurance that this is not a precedent for returning children to other countries as well?

[Baroness Neville-Jones]

My Lords, part of the service of providing assistance for reintegration will be to find these children’s families if they have not found them and to attempt to get them a job and an education. Actually, these young people are being helped to be put in a position that they might not have been in when they left their country. I do not think that we are doing them a disservice. On the question of wider immigration and deportation arrangements, that will obviously depend on the circumstances of each country, as the noble Lord knows.