Channel Crossings in Small Boats

Lord Dubs Excerpts

Thursday 3rd September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

My noble friend outlines some of the complexities of this. It is not in our purview to go and destroy boats that are not on our soil. They quite often come from France, as my noble friend said. On not landing in the UK, it is an internationally accepted arrangement that the first job of any maritime force, whether Border Force or whoever it is, to save lives at sea. That is a really important thing here. I will repeat what I said in the first instance: on taking someone somewhere else, when people are taken safely on to our soil we are obliged to hear and deal with their asylum claim. This is a problem for every state in the EU: we need to work, together with our partners, to deal with some of the problems of upstream criminality. The reason why people get on to these boats and take perilous journeys is that criminality, unfortunately, is at the heart of it.

[Lord Dubs (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I think we would all agree that these are desperate people, many of them children. They are often the victims of war and persecution. The best way forward is to reach some sort of agreement with the French authorities. I suggest that the Minister should say to the French, among other things, that we will take all the children in northern France who have family members in this country or other close links with this country. We should say that we will do this quickly and expeditiously, in return for which we expect the French to redouble their efforts to catch the traffickers.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

My Lords, that sounds really lovely in theory. In practice, it would just create another incentive for people traffickers to get people to France. Do not forget that France is a free, democratic and safe country. On arrangements with France, the noble Lord will know, because I spoke to him about it, that we have laid a legal text that talks about our obligations in taking asylum seekers who require our protection and, in turn, returning people who do not. Unfortunately, that has not progressed, but we continue to try to make progress with it because, as I have said all along, through the process of Brexit we want to help people who need our protection.

Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Dubs Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 22nd July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dubs (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I am grateful that a day or two ago, the Minister allowed us to ask questions and discuss the Bill in a more informal way than we can today. I still regret that there is so much in the Bill that it will not be in our power to do much about: in other words, the powers given to the Government under the Henry VIII provisions or immigration rules will be such that we can hardly influence them, and we cannot amend them. Can the immigration rules come to us in two stages: the first, amendable in draft form; and then the final version?

Other noble Lords have talked about the difficulties with social care. The Government are saying that their policy is that social care workers should have higher pay, and we should train more of them so that we do not need to have immigrants to deal with social care, where there are 100,000-plus vacancies at the moment. The trouble is, there will not be time for that: we will be near the end of the year and it takes time to train people; it is wishful thinking. The danger is that we will have a larger gap in social care provision as a result of this legislation. It is a retrograde step and we shall live to regret it.

I shall refer to one or two issues on which, if amendments are tabled, I hope I shall be able to support them. I am concerned about the length of immigration detention. As far as I know, we are the only country in Europe that has no limit on immigration detention. In 2019, 24,000 people were detained in this way. Currently, some 1,500 to 2,000 are detained, although it may have gone down a bit because of early releases due to the pandemic. I hope the Minister will confirm that a large proportion of those detained are, in the end, not removed from the country and are released. The only figure I can find is that 37% of those under immigration detention were removed and the remainder were released, so why detain them at all? What is the purpose of that? It seems to me quite wrong, in a democratic country, that we should be doing that.

The right to work for migrants should be such that they can work after six months and not one year. It is very hard for people who have arrived in this country and want to contribute to our economy and pay their taxes if they are not able to do that. I am also concerned about the discussions about no recourse to public funds, which punishes people twice over. I hope to be able to move an amendment to the Bill on child refugees. I believe that public opinion, if the arguments are put, supports bringing into this country some of the most vulnerable of our fellow human beings—child refugees in Calais and on the Greek islands. I very much hope the House will support such an amendment in the interests of human rights and justice.

Immigration: Detainee Support

Lord Dubs Excerpts

Tuesday 7th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I agree with the noble Baroness that human trafficking is an issue that often comes to light in the detention estate. As I said, a risk-based assessment is done when people leave detention, and people have access to support should they need it, if they are victims of trafficking. However, she is right: this is a real concern at the moment.

[Lord Dubs (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, the Minister said in reply to an earlier question that detention was for the purposes of removal. Could she then explain why in 2018—the latest year for which I have figures—56% of those detained were released back into the community? Is that not a sign that we are using detention far too much when we do not need to?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

People are released from detention for a number of reasons, including appeals that succeed because late information is provided. However, the noble Lord makes a valid point that we should look back on this period of the pandemic to see whether some of the things that we are doing now could be used in future to manage people in the community.

Reading Terrorist Attack

Lord Dubs Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, the noble Lord points to a crucial issue: those datasets for law enforcement purposes and national security need to be in place after our departure from the European Union. We have EU and other structures to use, depending on whether a negotiated outcome is agreed or not.

[Lord Dubs (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I agree that we saw the police at their very best in Reading a few days ago. I welcome the extra £90 million a year that will be allocated to counterterrorism policing. If I were a member of the intelligence and security services, I would want to find out from MI5 how many of the 30,000 people on a theoretical list it would like to keep under closer scrutiny. In other words, no matter what its resources are, is it in difficulty and does it not have enough resources to watch all those people? Will the Minister also comment on an added difficulty facing the security services? We have seen a resurgence of the threat from far-right terrorists as well, so the resources of the security services must be divided across a very wide spectrum indeed.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

The noble Lord is right to point out that we need the resources to tackle people who are either a danger to others or assessed as possibly being a danger to others. I pointed out earlier, in answer to the question on police officers and CT policing, that both have had a big uplift in their resources, but it is about the deployment of those resources and the intelligence that adds to the mix in ensuring that we can tackle some of the people who pose a real danger to our communities.

Child Refugees: Turkey and Greece

Lord Dubs Excerpts

Wednesday 11th March 2020 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Dubs]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to offer places to child refugees currently (1) on the border between Turkey and Greece, or (2) on Greek islands.

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Williams of Trafford) (Con)]

My Lords, the Government currently transfer eligible children located in Greece under the Dublin regulation, and will continue to do so during the transition period. The UK will also continue to transfer unaccompanied children in Greece through Section 67 of the Immigration Act 2016 until we fulfil this important obligation.

[Lord Dubs (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister, who will be as aware as anybody of the terrible conditions affecting refugees, especially child refugees, on the Greek islands. She will also be aware of the request made not long ago by the Greek Government that other countries should help in resettling some of the child refugees who have reached the Greek islands. Can the Minister confirm that the global resettlement scheme, which was referred to yesterday by Ministers in both Houses, will apply to children who are currently in Greece and on the Greek islands, and not just to those elsewhere in the region?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I understand what the noble Lord is saying, in the sense that those children are now in a European country as opposed to coming from whatever region in the world they come from. We will absolutely stand by our commitment to helping children from around the world who need our help. We are in dialogue with Greece and we will work closely with UNHCR, which both identifies and refers children who may need our resettlement.

European Arrest Warrant, Europol and Eurojust

Lord Dubs Excerpts

Monday 2nd March 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

As the noble Baroness will know, and as I have said on several occasions, we have engaged with the devolved authorities on all things, particularly in the area of law enforcement.

[Lord Dubs (Lab)]

My Lords, is it not the case that the European arrest warrant has one enormous advantage among many in that countries that do not normally extradite their people, do so under the EAW? What assurance have we that, in future, this will hold good? Many signals have come from European countries saying that they will not do so in the future. Does that not make us as a country weaker and more vulnerable to criminality?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I think it would mean that those states will try in their own countries—I have talked about the enhanced safeguards—but I do not think that will make this country less safe.

Immigration: Points-based System

Lord Dubs Excerpts

Tuesday 25th February 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, we have made it clear that it is incumbent on UK businesses to start to upskill the people who work for them and not to rely on cheap labour from the EU and beyond, as they did before. That is the challenge to businesses, but I take my noble friend’s point—I can hear the tutting—and obviously we will keep the system under review. It is a brand new system and the MAC will, of course, be advising us on it as we proceed.

[Lord Dubs (Lab)]

My Lords, does the Minister accept that the words that she has uttered today will have given little comfort to the many employers in this country who are worried about having enough people to work and do the necessary jobs that they have? The Statement referred to talented employees and she talked about people with A-levels and so on. Is there not a danger that we will simply be denuding key industries of the people we need? Is there not a terrible danger to the health service, particularly in social care? I am not aware of anything in what the Minister suggested that would make us feel that social care is going to work. It is on the point of collapsing anyway, and it will collapse even further if there are no people willing to do the job. Of course, the answer is to have a whacking big pay increase for people in social care, but that is not for this afternoon: it is for another occasion. I implore the Minister to understand that employers are desperately worried about what is going to happen, and they have not had any assurances in what she said.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, in the coming months, we will engage widely with different sectors and, I hope, allay their fears. It is important to say, though, that employers should be moving away from reliance on the UK’s immigration system as an alternative to investment in staff retention, particularly in areas such as technology and innovation. There are two things that run alongside each other: immigration must be considered alongside investment in, and development of, the UK’s domestic workforce. That includes—and this relates to the noble Lord’s point—valuing care staff and paying them a decent wage.

Brexit: Child Refugees

Lord Dubs Excerpts

Monday 8th January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, as I outlined in my first Answer, our commitment to supporting refugees will not change when we leave the EU. The noble Lord has referred to 3,000 children. I do not know if he said he was happy or sad about that, but of course we are committed to resettling 3,000 vulnerable children under the vulnerable children’s resettlement scheme, and, in addition, some 20,000 UNHCR-recognised refugees by 2020, 9,000 of whom have already arrived.

[Lord Dubs (Lab)]

My Lords, will the Minister confirm that several hundred unaccompanied child refugees are in the Calais area at the moment, along with perhaps a couple of thousand on the islands in Greece, many of them sleeping rough without any accommodation? Will she also confirm that we still have an obligation under the Dublin treaty and under Section 67 of the Immigration Act to take action? Surely what is holding things up is a lack of political will on the part of the Government.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I cannot confirm how many hundreds of unaccompanied children are in Calais, but what I can absolutely confirm is that this country, upon request, will take children referred to us, and we continue to work to do that. It is not lack of will on the part of the Government. As I have said, since 2010 around 42,000 children have been given some sort of leave to come to this country.

Refugees (Family Reunion) Bill [HL]

Lord Dubs Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 15th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dubs (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness on achieving this debate with her important Private Member’s Bill.

There are, I think we are aware, 65 million refugees in the world. How we handle the refugee situation is one of the greatest challenges to all of us—although the majority of them are miles away, nowhere near the United Kingdom. It is as well to remember that even with the Syrians, there are about 3 million in Turkey and about 1 million each in Jordan and Lebanon. So when people say to me, “Why are we worried about unaccompanied child refugees coming to Britain?”, I say that it is such a small number compared to those in the region itself.

I will digress from the subject of the Bill for a moment. I was in St James’s church, Piccadilly, at the invitation of the vicar two days ago. There is a wonderful installation in that lovely old church, in which clothes discarded by refugees who arrived in Lesbos hang from the ceiling. It is a powerful image indeed, showing what it means to be a refugee. One wonders what happened to all the refugees whose clothes are hanging up there in that installation.

The important thing in this is public opinion. I firmly believe that we have to keep public opinion on our side if we are to deal humanely with refugees. I still believe, certainly as regards refugee children—and refugees as a whole—that public opinion, if informed of what is going on and of the experiences that refugees have been through, is still, by and large, on our side. I have been involved quite a bit in talking about refugees, and I always say, “I must bear in mind that public opinion has to be with us, then we can be much more humane and can do better things”. On this issue in the Bill, public opinion is certainly on our side. All we have to do is to explain to the public what the position is and how individuals are affected. They will not all come round—I have had a few abusive tweets and so on—but on the whole, public opinion is supportive.

We have to bear in mind that every refugee has gone through a period of uncertainty at the least; sometimes their experiences have been terrible. I was talking to a Syrian boy some months ago who told me that his father had been killed, virtually in front of him, by a bomb, either in Aleppo or Damascus. I asked him about the rest of his family and he said that he did not know. But suppose that the rest of his family have escaped from the carnage in Syria and that his mother, and possibly his siblings, are somewhere in Greece or Turkey. Will we say that the Bill should not apply and that the family should not come to join that young boy here? Of course we cannot say that—it would be inhumane. Yet, save for exceptional circumstances, that is exactly the position—and that is what the noble Baroness’s Bill seeks to remedy.

Of course, there are other uncertainties as well. If a child reaches the age of 18, there is no assurance that they can stay in this country, which is a key issue. However, the main issue for many refugees is separation from family. The child leaves, and then he—it is more often a boy than a girl, because usually only a boy takes the risk of undertaking the terrible journey and can make it in these difficult circumstances—will possibly end up in Dunkirk, Calais or Greece, and maybe will come here. What can he do then, if he cannot be joined by his family? I cannot think of anything more painful. As for his family, do they sit it out in Greece, Turkey or Jordan and just say, “We are never going to be able to join our son in Britain”, or do they make the dangerous journey themselves, subject to trafficking and other things? It is a terrible dilemma to put a family in by saying, “You can either stay in these circumstances separated from your child or you can undertake a dangerous journey”.

The Home Affairs Select Committee said this clearly:

“It seems to us perverse that children who have been granted refugee status in the UK are not then allowed to bring their close family to join them in the same way as an adult would be able to do. The right to live safely with family should apply to child refugees just as it does to adults”.


Surely that is the total argument as regards children. There are other aspects in the Bill, but this seems to be the main one. That is the case, and the Government need to be able to respond to the case of the Home Affairs Select Committee. We will hear arguments about pull factors. We hear such arguments every time anything is said about refugees. There are also push factors. There may be an element of a pull factor, but it is not much of one compared to the humanitarian need to do something to deal with these terrible family separations.

We are told that there might be exceptional circumstances. That is fine; if the exceptional circumstances apply often enough, maybe that would be all right. But it is still uncertain—and even if they applied, they would not give the protection that there would be if people came as of right to be united with their family member. Indeed, the Government themselves said, as the noble Baroness quoted, that exceptional circumstances in these cases must be very rare. Of course, the complexity of the situation is such that, without legal aid, it is very difficult indeed to make much progress.

That is the argument. The Dublin III provisions do not cover all cases—only a small number—and in any case they apply only when a child somewhere seeks to join their family, not when a family seeks to join a child. So there is a clear, humane and humanitarian case in favour of the Bill. I believe that if it were put to the British people, they would support it. That is why we should support the Bill.

Calais: Refugees

Lord Dubs Excerpts

Thursday 2nd November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dubs (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Roberts, for making this debate possible. The cause of unaccompanied child refugees is one that commands all-party support, as evidenced by the debate that took place in the House of Commons earlier this afternoon. Whether it is under Section 67 or Dublin III, the Government are committed to bringing 480 unaccompanied child refugees to this country. So far, only 200 have come. Why can we not get a move on? Why should they lie there in Calais or Greece? Nothing seems to be happening, yet the Government have made that commitment. There must be some reason. Furthermore, many local authorities are willing to take more child refugees, whether in England, Scotland—which has hardly been tapped for this—Northern Ireland or Wales. We have evidence of local authorities in those areas that are willing to help.

I have been to Calais three times recently. The situation there is absolutely desperate. People are sleeping in the woods. Some wonderful NGOs and Safe Passage are helping refugees, but on the whole refugees depend on a food kitchen and the situation is pretty desperate. A temporary accommodation centre has been opened recently. It is much too small. People there need legal advice so that they know what their rights are. The long journey to Lille to have their application documented is pretty difficult, particularly since the office there is small and very little processing can take place.

There is a cut-off date of 20 March, which the Government devised of their own making. That date is very difficult because we know that the documentation on when young people arrive in Europe is never very clear-cut. I know, for example, that in Greece some of the children who arrived were not documented until after 20 March, although they had arrived some time before. There was a fire in a reception centre on one of the islands. The records were burned. The same probably goes for children in France as well. I urge the Government to be flexible about the cut-off date, otherwise it will be excessively rigid and children will be denied a decent situation.

When the children come to this country, many of them will do extremely well. I have heard of situations where young people do well and where they are getting on in school. I know of one young Syrian boy in Northern Ireland who was rejected by most of the schools in Belfast because his English was not good enough. He went to an integrated school and he got top marks in English after two or three years. There are real success stories that we need to talk about.

I believe public opinion is still on the side of our taking more child refugees. None of us is arguing that we should take the lot. None of us has said every child refugee in Europe should come here. But we should take our fair share. It is my contention that we are not doing that. I believe public opinion is behind us on this.