Refugees: Mass Displacement

Lord Dubs Excerpts

Thursday 6th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dubs (Lab)]

My Lords, I join in the congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Alton, not only on initiating this debate but on his consistent commitment to the cause of refugees and displaced persons. It is a privilege to follow the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, who is the voice of common sense, reason and insight, and we enjoy listening to his speeches.

I have the privilege of serving on the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, where we have a migration committee and we co-operate with the Council of Europe, but of course we are looking more at migration movements into Europe than we are its root causes. We have to accept, and public opinion needs to be prepared for this, that movements of populations towards this country, towards Europe and indeed all over the world will continue, exacerbated not only by wars, conflict, tension and persecution but by climate change. We have to accept that such movements will be the norm rather than deciding that, like King Canute, we can somehow stop the tide.

I join in the condemnation of our mean, niggardly approach to overseas aid. The 0.7% commitment was good—not enough, but good—but we have moved away from it. For us to be cutting it, at a time when the need for an increased overseas aid budget is paramount, is niggardly. I only hope that the Government will change their mind. Our reputation as a country and, above all, our commitment to tackling root causes surely depend upon a decent overseas aid budget. Instead we are seeing miserable approaches such as pushbacks, whether in Croatia or Bosnia, on the Belarus border or in the Mediterranean—or indeed whether we initiate them, as we saw in yesterday’s debate. Surely that is not the right way to move forward.

We should acknowledge what other countries are doing. We may not be fans of the Turkish Government in all respects, but at least they have 3 million to 4 million refugees while the Lebanese are getting on for a million, as are the Jordanians. When people say to me, “Why don’t Muslim countries do more?”, I point out the millions that there are in those countries whereas we are arguing about a small number of people, albeit an important number, who seek to make their way here, and indeed the small numbers who get to Europe other than to Germany.

I want to say two other things. First, it is important that we have public opinion on our side in attempting to explain why tackling the root causes is important, and that it is the best way of dealing with these enormous migration flows. Secondly, we have to be aware of the far right in Europe, who are seeking to exploit the refugee argument for their own miserable political ends. We have, unfortunately, seen how the far right in Europe have achieved electoral successes, some in Germany—in Hungary they are always there—and in Italy, Austria and elsewhere. That is very depressing. I believe the only way to tackle the far right is to make sure that public opinion understands what we are about and we do not have Ministers saying “We don’t want these people here”, because that is exactly the way in which public opinion is not going to be sympathetic to this.

Lastly, there are success stories and Canada is one of them. We should look at Canada and see what it is doing, both internationally and in terms of accepting refugees. Canada is a good example of what can be done, and maybe we should emulate it.