Children: Refugees
Lord Dubs Excerpts(7 years, 2 months ago)
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The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Williams of Trafford) (Con)
My Lords, the Government are committed to transferring a specified number of eligible children to the UK under Section 67 of the Immigration Act 2016 as part of our broader response to the migration crisis. All transfers need to take place in line with member states’ national laws. Last year, we transferred over 200 children under the scheme. We have accepted further referrals in recent weeks and we expect children to arrive in the UK in the coming weeks.
Lord Dubs (Lab)
My Lords, does the Minister agree that the figure of 200 to date is disappointing? If that is the fault of the Greek, Italian and French authorities, that is very disappointing. If it is the fault of the British Government, it is shocking. Which is it?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, first, I say to the noble Lord that we continue to work with our partners in Europe under the scheme to transfer children where we can. However, as he will know and as I have said to the House before, we cannot just go into countries and take children. It might be helpful to explain the broader context in which we operate. In 2016 the UK settled more refugees from outside Europe than any other EU state. According to Eurostat figures, over a third of people resettled in the EU came to the UK. We have granted asylum or another form of leave to over 9,000 children in the past year—over 42,000 since 2010.
Cannabis
Lord Dubs Excerpts(7 years, 2 months ago)
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Lord Dubs (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, for initiating this debate. I just want to say something about the case of a little boy. I think that some of us have heard from his grandmother but I shall explain the case briefly.
He has a very rare condition—which I think is called non-inherited genetic mutation in the PCDH19 gene—for which so far only a steroid treatment is effective. This is not suitable for long-term use because of the serious health consequences. It is very likely that whole-plant medical cannabis will work and will be without particular side-effects. To get such medical cannabis, the family of the six-year-old boy would have to travel to a country where it is legal for doctors to prescribe medical cannabis. There is a product under test called Epidiolex. It is a cannabis-based product but is not yet available and is subject to a long testing regime, which may be too long for this little boy. There is a need to move quickly to permit medical cannabis to be given to this little boy under medical management.
I now turn to the wider issue of cannabis for people with MS. I should declare an interest in that a member of my family has MS. We have had an excellent briefing from the MS Society, which says that 22% of people with MS have tried cannabis. I only know that a consultant thinks that every one of his patients has tried cannabis, not 22% of them, and I put that to the MS Society.
There is a product called Sativex that might do the business but which is not available to NHS patients, although it should be in Wales. The problem is that there is a dangerous version of cannabis known as skunk. People who are buying it on the illegal market are liable to get skunk, which I understand is not desirable, whereas ordinary cannabis is okay. By making the whole thing illegal, we are encouraging people to go to dealers, who are liable to give them the dangerous stuff rather than the helpful stuff.
Some doctors say that there is no evidence that cannabis is helpful to people with MS. I have a simple answer to that. If a person suffering from a medical condition like MS feels that cannabis is helpful, surely that is enough evidence. I am not anti-scientific and I understand the noble Lord’s comments, but if a patient feels that it is helpful, then by definition it must be. That is the case for me.
Immigration Act 2016
Lord Dubs Excerpts(7 years, 4 months ago)
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Baroness Williams of Trafford
The most reverend Primate will appreciate that people are killed when they travel from the region to places such as France. It is really worth the House noting that those who benefit most from refugees travelling to places in Europe are the people traffickers—the unscrupulous thugs who bring those people at great peril across the sea, many of whom die on the way. That is why we are so keen to help children and families in the region, rather than have them make that perilous journey. A change in the date, I am sad to say, would act as that pull factor.
Lord Dubs (Lab)
Can I ask the Minister for a simple answer to a simple question? Once we have reached the total of 480 children that she says the Government will accept under Section 67, is that the end of it or will the Government respond to local authorities which are still saying that they are willing to take more? It is a simple yes or no.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
I hope that I can give the noble Lord a simple answer: the figure of 480 is a specified number, which the noble Lord will appreciate because it is the number that we agreed. The noble Lord well knows that local authorities do not take children just from the Dubs scheme but from other schemes; I know that he appreciates that, and that local authorities are limited by capacity. We are always willing to listen to and take advice from local authorities which feel that their capacity has improved, but I have to say to the noble Lord that we arrived at the specified number and we are bound by local authorities’ capacity.
Refugees
Lord Dubs Excerpts(7 years, 4 months ago)
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Lord Dubs (Lab)
My Lords, I have one brief question about access to higher education, which relates to the recommendation at paragraph 139 of the report. During the passage of the higher education Bill, I was assured that the Government would give people with humanitarian protection refugee status to enable them to get student support immediately. Is that going to happen?
Child Refugees
Lord Dubs Excerpts(7 years, 4 months ago)
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The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Williams of Trafford) (Con)
My Lords, in 2016, we transferred over 900 unaccompanied asylum-seeking children to the UK from Europe. The Government are fully committed to implementing Section 67 of the Immigration Act 2016, and more than 200 children are already here under that scheme. We are working closely with EU partners to implement Section 67 of the Immigration Act and ensure that children with qualifying family in the UK can be transferred quickly and safely under the Dublin III regulations.
Lord Dubs (Lab)
My Lords, if I have heard correctly, am I right in thinking that the Government have changed their policy from before the election when they set a cap on Section 67 children coming here, which was going to be 480 in total? Will the Minister confirm that that cap no longer applies?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, the figure that we set before the election was based on the capacity of local authorities to accommodate those children through Section 67. As the noble Lord knows, and I have apologised for this, there was an administrative error and that number is now 480. I do apologise. It was not so much a cap as the ability of local authorities to accommodate these children. I have said before at this Dispatch Box that our doors are always open for local authorities to come to us and say that they can accommodate more children.
Child Refugees
Lord Dubs Excerpts(7 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Dubs (Lab)
My Lords, I beg leave to ask a Question of which I have given private notice.
The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Williams of Trafford) (Con)
My Lords, in 2016, the UK transferred more than 750 children from France as part of comprehensive support for the Calais camp clearance. The UK also offered support to France following the recent fire at Dunkirk. We continue to work closely with the French to transfer eligible children under Section 67 of the Immigration Act and the Dublin regulation. The fastest route to safety is to claim asylum in France.
Lord Dubs
My Lords, I welcome the fact that the Government announced in a Written Ministerial Statement today that a further 130 children would be taken into this country under Section 67 of the Immigration Act, even if the reason is the Home Office having to hang its head in shame because it made an administrative error as part of collating the figures. That comes out of “Yes Minister”. Will the Government now reconsult local authorities, because many local authorities, not just in England but in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, have expressed a willingness to take more child refugees? Is not the Minister aware that many representations have been made recently about the availability of local authority places?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
The administrative error is most unfortunate, and for that I apologise. I would not want that to happen. The good news is that we have an additional 130 places, and I think we should all be very pleased about that. The important thing here is that no child has been disfranchised. Any eligible child has been taken thus far, and 200 children have been taken so far, so we have not even got to the figure of 350. I would not want noble Lords to think that any child had been disfranchised because of this administrative error, which is, as I said, most regrettable.
On the consultation, we have consulted local authorities. For the record, I can tell noble Lords that there are 4,000 unaccompanied children in local authority care as we speak. Some local authorities, such as Kent and Croydon, host a disproportionate number of children. We are always very glad to hear from local authorities coming forward to take children through the national transfer scheme or to take refugee children, but it is not as though we have not consulted properly. I know that the Immigration Minister wrote to all local authorities, a national launch event was held, and more than 10 regional events were held in every part of England, as well as one in Scotland and one in Wales.
Child Refugees
Lord Dubs Excerpts(7 years, 9 months ago)
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Lord Dubs (Lab)
My Lords, I beg leave to ask a Question of which I have given private notice.
The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Williams of Trafford) (Con)
My Lords, we have not closed the scheme to transfer children under Section 67 of the Immigration Act. The announcement yesterday specified the total number of children that will be transferred pursuant to Section 67, as required by the legislation. Over 200 children have already arrived in the UK under this provision and more children will continue to be transferred from Europe up to the specified number of 350.
Lord Dubs
My Lords, I must confess that I am slightly puzzled because, if the Government say that there is a specified number of children, then after that total has been reached the scheme has been closed. I remember—it was not long ago—that the Prime Minister, when she was Home Secretary, told me that the Government were prepared to accept the amendment, and on the same day the then Immigration Minister said to me that the Government would accept the letter and the spirit of that amendment. In arbitrarily closing down a scheme without any good reason for doing so, I believe that the Government are in breach of their own commitments.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, the scheme is not closed. As the noble Lord said, we will be accepting up to the limit of 350 but at this point in time the scheme is not closed.
European Union: Freedom of Movement
Lord Dubs Excerpts(7 years, 10 months ago)
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The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Williams of Trafford) (Con)
My Lords, the free movement of persons for work and other purposes is provided for in the treaties and CJEU case law and largely governed by the free movement directive. All member states are bound by this directive, including the UK, and implement this through their respective domestic legislation. The directive sets out that in order for an EU citizen to reside in another member state beyond three months, they must be exercising a treaty right; that is, working, self-employed, self-sufficient or a student.
Lord Dubs (Lab)
My Lords, has the Minister’s Answer not got to the nub of this? The three-month practice is what most countries in the EU follow—namely, that you can stay for three months and, if you have not got a job by then, off you go. We do not do that. Surely if we adhered to the same practice as most other EU countries we would be in a much better position to negotiate a sensible way forward.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, the Government do not comment on other member states’ implementation of the free movement directive. We are about to begin these negotiations and it would wrong to set out our position in advance, but the Government are clear that at every step of these negotiations we will work to ensure the best possible outcome for the UK.
Calais: Child Refugees
Lord Dubs Excerpts(7 years, 11 months ago)
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Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, I think I set out in my first answer that that is precisely what we will do.
Lord Dubs (Lab)
My Lords, while I appreciate that children have been dispersed to many parts of France from Calais, have all of them now been contacted by Home Office officials? Do they know their situation? If they have not all been contacted, by when does the Minister think they will be told what will happen to them?
Immigration Act
Lord Dubs Excerpts(8 years ago)
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Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, it will perhaps be helpful if I repeat the criteria on which these children will be considered. We will be considering: all those children aged 12 or under, not just certain children from certain countries; all children referred to us by the French authorities who are assessed as being at high-risk of sexual exploitation; and those nationalities most likely to qualify for refugee status in the UK aged 15 or under.
Lord Dubs (Lab)
My Lords, this is a bitterly disappointing Statement. Can the Minister confirm that, when the Government announced their response to Section 67 of the Immigration Act, the Government said they would respect the letter and spirit of that amendment? My contention is that the Government are doing neither. How can one say that young children refugees fleeing from Eritrea, Somalia and Afghanistan, for example, are not eligible to claim refugee status on a statistical basis? That is a breach of the 1951 Geneva Convention. Can the Minister please think again about this depressing Statement?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, I am disappointed that the noble Lord is disappointed in the Statement, because he and I have worked so productively over the last few weeks and months on Calais. In October, we updated our country guidance on Eritrea to reflect the court judgment, but we cannot base a threshold on possible future grant rates. The threshold is based on overall grant rates for the year ending June 2016 and the nationalities that have a grant rate of 75% or higher are Sudanese and Syrian.