EU: Asylum Seekers

Lord Higgins Excerpts

Thursday 18th June 2015 Grand Committee

[Lord Higgins (Con)]

My Lords, Britain generally has a very good record on helping asylum seekers. I suddenly realised this morning that I am the only survivor of a three-man Cabinet committee which eventually persuaded the Government to accept the entry of Kenyan Asians who were being persecuted under Mr Amin. I must say that it was an extremely successful exercise because they have integrated in an extraordinary way. However, our record is not without some flaws. It was quite late that I discovered that, when war broke out in 1939, not only were Jewish refugees arrested and interned but the Treasury confiscated any assets that they had. It was decades later before I managed to persuade Margaret Beckett, who was very good on this, to get the Treasury to do something to try to repay the heirs and successors of those who had suffered in this way.

It is very important indeed that we maintain our good record on asylum seekers, but we have to face the fact that we now have an enormous problem compared with any previous situation that one can recall. It is not simply individual asylum seekers who are being persecuted, or identifiable groups, but a whole tranche of people who are being persecuted because war is taking place on their territory, and they are nowadays better able to move than they were before.

I am a little puzzled as to why this is a Home Office matter and why my noble friend is replying, since many aspects of it are clearly international. I am sure that he can assure us that there is adequate co-operation between departments. Essentially, the Home Secretary sought to set out a programme. The question I have is: are we making any progress whatsoever on the various proposals that she made? She said first that,

“separating the current essential search and rescue work from the process of gaining permission to stay”,

in the UK is essential. We should then seek to establish a safe landing area where we can separate economic migrants from genuine refugees. Have we made any progress in international negotiations in getting that done?

The crucial problem that we face is that the more we do to try to help the desperate people in danger in the Mediterranean, the more we are likely to encourage them to come. We have to face this crucial problem. If they thought that, although they would be rescued, that does not mean that they then have free access to achieve the travel that they were trying to carry out; that is another matter. The two things are very much linked. It has to be: what do we do with those who are not genuine refugees and what do we do as far as that is concerned?

I have to say to my noble friend that I am not the least bit clear, given the Home Office’s policy, what orders are given to our naval ships and so on as to where they should disembark the people who they rescue. There seems to be some contradiction as far as that is concerned.

Overall, the policy that the Government are putting forward is right. We must try to support it. There are a number of other ways that we can help. In particular, we need to take stronger action against traffickers. Have we managed to arrest any traffickers? Have any of them been prosecuted? What penalties have been imposed on them? One’s impression is that that this has been a totally futile exercise and that there does not seem to have been any attempt whatever, when traffickers accompany or begin to accompany and then desert those who seek to travel, to segregate traffickers from the remaining people in the boats.

These are immensely difficult problems. We are grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Dykes, for initiating the debate, but it is clearly so important that we ought to have a debate on the Floor of the House at a very early date.