Family Migration (Justice and Home Affairs Committee Report)

Lord Griffiths of Burry Port Excerpts

Wednesday 20th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)]

My Lords, as I was sitting here innocently awaiting my turn to speak, a whisper in my ear said that I would follow the Bishop. It is the entire story of my life as a Methodist minister that I have always been obliged to follow a bishop. I am always glad to follow this particular one, who has persistently argued his case and put the Government in a place where he and we expect answers.

I use the few minutes at my disposal to take an opportunity that is rarely afforded me. I am part of the delegation that represents our Parliament at the Council of Europe. I sit on its migration committee, which commissioned me to write a report to assess the impact of 70 years of the convention on refugees and displaced people from 1951. I did so three years ago, and that report was subsequently endorsed by a full meeting of the parliamentary assembly in Rome in November 2021.

In the work that I did then, I noticed a certain theme that could be traced through all the ups and downs of the migration question in the intervening years. I start by quoting a sentence or two from the decisions of the conference of plenipotentiaries, which met after the ratification of the convention in which the words appear. The conference recommended that the “unity of … the family” should be

“maintained particularly in cases where the head of the family has fulfilled the necessary conditions for admission to a particular country”,

by extending the

“rights granted to a refugee”

to cover all the members of their family and providing special protection for

“refugees who are minors, in particular unaccompanied children and girls”.

That is how it started. The convention itself is of course more ample even than that.

In the report that I wrote and submitted, the following proposal appears:

“The Assembly … notes that recent Council of Europe action plans formulated in the migration sphere, which have focused on the protection of children and vulnerable persons, are set to conclude in 2025. For the period following that date, as part of a succession plan, the Council of Europe … should consider aligning itself with the UNHCR and its ‘Strategy on Resettlement and Complementary Pathways’. This strategy has set target figures for resettlement of one million refugees and two million others through complementary pathways such as family reunification or labour mobility schemes—targets to be achieved by 2028. A new pan-European action plan to support resettlement and enhance refugees’ self-reliance in the period from 2025 to 2028”


would allow great benefit to the countries involved. That recommendation was made and accepted.

As a cry of despair, really, I ask the noble Lord the governor—I apologise, I cannot even imagine how I could make such a mistake. I ask the lovely noble Lord the Minister: to what extent, and in what detail, does the Home Office look at what comes out of Strasbourg and use the fact that some of us have been there for the deliberations to engage in discussions on the pithy points being made at the heart of these recommendations? This was unanimously accepted: a pan-European approach to the whole problem, with reunification of families at the very heart of that recommendation.

These arguments were presented and the council deliberated in the shadow of the first of those two wretched Acts—the Nationality and Borders Act and the Illegal Migration Act. They have robbed our country of its authoritative voice in speaking to these issues in the meetings of the assembly.