Refugees: Mass Displacement

Lord Griffiths of Burry Port Excerpts

Thursday 6th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)]

My Lords, I add my voice to all others in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for bringing this debate to the Floor of the House. I would just translate a change in the wording of the Motion from percentages into numbers, so that we can remind ourselves that we are living in a world where 36.4 million children count as displaced persons and 26.3 million people are refugees. These are horrible figures to contemplate.

Faced with the size of the problem, the United Nations is bringing forward its global compact. I am so happy that my noble and right reverend friend Lord Harries, if he will allow me to call him that, has given it such ample recognition. The United Kingdom is one of 181 nations to endorse the programme. Its principles are to be implemented through the more than 1,400 pledges made by Governments, civil society and other stakeholders at the first Global Refugee Forum in December 2019. It offers, as he said, a legally non- binding and readily accessible framework document under which states agree that they will share equitably the responsibility for refugees.

A two-year opening phase of this programme was launched just a month ago in Geneva. It describes itself as offering a breakthrough in addressing some of the acknowledged difficulties surrounding the implementation of the United Nations convention and its protocol. This represents an urgent international response and should be given proper notice. There was scant mention of it, however, in yesterday’s Second Reading on the Nationality and Borders Bill. Yet it is a major attempt by the United Nations to deal with the current state of affairs and deserves to be given proper focus—I hope it will be—at later stages in the consideration of that Bill.

In yesterday’s debate, both Ministers were adamant that the Bill we were discussing in no way undermined the international agreements and conventions to which we are a party. Yet a 72-page document from the UNHCR spells out not only the way in which we in the United Kingdom risk being in breach of our commitments, but how the proposals in our Bill would effectively undermine the complex international structures at a more general level. As an ordinary Member of this House, it seems important to me that somebody with authority and a full understanding of both arguments—the United Kingdom case and the UNHCR case—should explain to the House how to reconcile these apparently divergent narratives.

In my contribution to yesterday’s debate, I urged our lawyers and judges to help us in this regard. These are matters of law, after all. The Bill is proving worrisome to a broad phalanx of organisations in civil society and across the globe. They out there at large, as well as we here in this House, deserve satisfaction as we seek to find our way forward on this matter.