Brexit: Refugee Protection and Asylum Policy (EUC Report)

Lord Dubs Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd September 2020 Grand Committee

[Lord Dubs (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I give a very warm and enthusiastic welcome to this report. It is excellent and will be enormously helpful in our future debates on the whole topic, including Report stage of the immigration Bill. I appreciate that the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, with whom I have had a number of disagreements, has been very helpful. She is open to discussion, is very conciliatory and has made it easy for us to engage with her, even if, in the end, we are not totally in agreement with her.

The recent tragic fire in Moria camp on Lesbos has been a shock to all of us. I visited Moria about a year and a half ago. It then had 10,000 people in it, having had an original capacity of 2,000. It was a shocking place. It was very overcrowded and probably already a powder keg at that point, so it was not surprising to me that there was a fire and the world was able to see the situation there as, indeed, the world has at intervals been able to see the situation in Calais. I have also visited there and, again, the conditions for the people sleeping under trees and awnings are pretty depressing.

I believe, as the report makes clear, that there is a need for an immediate UK response. We should say to Greece and France that we will take children with family reunion applications with entitlements to apply here. Surely, we should respond to the plea for help from the Greek Government. They made it some time before the fire and again now in light of the fire. Other countries have offered help—the Germans, the French and so on. We should share responsibility as well.

The noble Lord, Lord Jay, in introducing the debate, talked about the implications of there being no deal or just a limited deal. When I put this point to the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, some little while ago, she said that the Government’s policy was to achieve a deal and therefore the no-deal situation was not one she wanted to comment on. I hope I am not putting the wrong words into her mouth. We are getting nearer and nearer to the point where there may be no deal and this could have tragic consequences for the basis we have been working on, the Dublin treaty, which has been very positive and helpful.

Can the Minister tell us what the present state is of the EU/UK negotiations? The noble Lord, Lord Jay, made it clear that just recently Brussels had said that it did not have the powers to negotiate on this issue on behalf of the 27. That would mean that our Government would have to negotiate with each individual country, which is a pretty depressing task. Can the Minister tell us something more positive about it?

The Government frequently say that there are numbers of refugees coming here—although I am bound to say when the Minister gives numbers most of those have crossed illegally, there being an absence of legal paths to safety—but the numbers reaching this country are very low compared with France and Germany and tiny compared to those arriving in Greece, Italy and Malta. Our location is simply a geographical accident rather than any matter of policy.

I think we have been shocked recently that rescue boats in the Mediterranean that have picked up people who were in dangerous dinghies were being refused permission to land in some countries. That is a depressing outlook for Europe—all European countries should share responsibility. Even if we are not members of the European Union, it is the case now, and will be more so after 1 January, that we should still share responsibility for refugees. It affects all European countries, whether in the EU or not. The Germans have stepped in, and so have the French and other countries. We should also say publicly that we as a country are willing to share some responsibility. I would like the Government to give a public assurance that they will co-operate with the EU countries to see how we can all together, each country, help in this.

The report praises the Dublin system as being the best way forward. It does, of course, have time limits. It also has within its provisions the ability to return asylum seekers who are already registered in another country. If we do not continue with some form of agreement like the Dublin system, we will be left even without that safeguard, which the Government want. I appreciate that the EU is talking openly about a replacement for the Dublin treaty. I do not know what that will include, but I hope it will be positive and I hope we will be part of it. Certainly, to establish UK/EU co-operation post-Brexit, we will need to have good will. We will need to ensure that we remain friends with EU countries. We cannot deal sensibly with asylum seekers and refugees unless we have a basis of good will. I welcome the report’s indication that Dublin should be the starting point.

I believe the Government will say that they are planning to have a single global refugee resettlement programme. I welcome that, although it depends a bit on the numbers that will be involved and its scope. Will it include children who are currently in EU countries? Otherwise it leaves a gap. The Dublin treaty filled that gap, but it will no longer be there. I hope the Government will tell us that the single global refugee resettlement programme will include the ability for us to take refugees from France and Greece. Given that it will consolidate a number of existing schemes, I hope it will be wide enough to do that.

One of the things in the report is almost a plea that the EU should move with speed and efficiency in dealing with asylum applications. There have been very long time lags. I hope that the Home Office can speed up the process. I welcome the comments in the report that there should be better co-operation on these issues between local government and the NGOs that are working in this field. They need to be involved more in the policies that are being put forward.

The report mentions guardianship. That is a debate in itself. I have discussed this with local authority leaders. I think it is a good idea, but there is a question of resources. In some countries, guardians are simply well-meaning individuals; in other countries where they have the guardianship idea, they use qualified social workers. Our mood would be that we should look to qualified social workers to become guardians. They could adopt a holistic approach to looking at all the issues that affect an unaccompanied refugee child. They can provide the help, support and advice necessary. There is a whole issue there that needs more debate.

Finally, I welcome the comment towards the end of the report’s recommendations that urges the Government to moderate the language used when discussing asylum issues. That is essential. We need public opinion on our side to understand what the issues are, why we are doing this, why it is humanitarian for us to do it, and why this should never be at the expense of dealing with homeless people, homeless children or others who are already in this country. It is not one or the other but both, and we should be broad-minded enough to be able to do that. However, the language used is important and it will gain public acceptance for the policy. I welcome this report with enormous enthusiasm.