Immigration: Detainee Support

Lord Judd Excerpts

Tuesday 7th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, this country is probably one of the most generous in the world when it comes to our treatment of asylum seekers. The noble Lord refers to the accommodation in Glasgow. It is three-star accommodation in a Radisson hotel, which I think is very generous by all measures. People would not be getting the £35 a week because everything is provided for them—bed, board, food and any other needs they have.

[Lord Judd (Lab) [V]]

We all know that the noble Baroness is very compassionate and decent. But whatever her intentions, that is not the present reality in too many instances. If people are left destitute and desperate, this appears to them and those around them, and to the world, to be highly cynical and simply not compatible with civilised values. Can she redouble efforts to ensure that there is proper support and guidance for people who are being released into the community, given all the risks that will confront them?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, nobody should be left destitute in the current situation. Anyone who has applied for asylum, and even those who have been refused asylum, is being housed either in hotels or initial accommodation. If anyone is destitute, it is perhaps because they have breached the conditions which they are obliged to follow. In the main, we are a very humane country, with a humane Government who want to help these people. During the pandemic, everybody who has claimed asylum, and even those whose asylum claims have failed, is being looked after.

National Asylum Support Service

Lord Judd Excerpts

Wednesday 6th May 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

We are working with accommodation providers and NGOs—and in the detention estate, as the noble Baroness outlines—to ensure that they are providing services to vulnerable asylum seekers. Our providers have identified vulnerable service users and are providing them with additional support, including supplying food parcels where needed. We have also procured 4,000 single hotel rooms to assist with initial asylum seekers at this time.

[Lord Judd (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Lord Speaker for calling me and the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, for asking this Question. Is it not essential that all those dealing with asylum seekers constantly remember that these people—women, children and men—have been through terrible experiences, too often involving torture, which in many instances have left them scarred? Is it not therefore essential that, in all that we do, we take as warm and supportive an attitude as possible and that we avoid a minimalist, regimented regime? Should the good Samaritan not constantly be our example?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, the noble Lord is absolutely right. Some of these people will have had the most terrible experiences. Nobody whose asylum application is complete will be asked to leave the country. As I said, we are procuring 4,000 hotel rooms. People in both our asylum estate and our detention estate are treated as any other member of the public would be, whether they are vulnerable, as the noble Lord outlined, or not.

Calais: Refugees

Lord Judd Excerpts

Thursday 2nd November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Judd (Lab)]

My Lords, we have all to thank the noble Lord, Lord Roberts, for his courageous and constant vigilance on this issue. It has been good again to hear from my noble friend Lord Dubs, whose tireless work for practical results, however frustrating he finds it, is outstanding.

Three specific issues strike me concerning what my noble friend said. First, can we have an assurance from the Minister that the arrangements presently in place in the temporary centre in northern France will survive Brexit? How long can they be guaranteed? Secondly, can there be legal assistance for the young people at that centre? It is urgently needed. Thirdly, can proper transit arrangements rapidly be made to deal with the processing of documents?

We all know that whatever wonderful is work done by families, communities and local authorities in this country to provide a home for quite a number of refugees, the situation is still not satisfactory. In terms of the proportion of national wealth and national income for individual families, we in Britain still lag behind Europe in what we are doing. There is no reason for this. It is a tremendous challenge for us all.

Finally, I say simply that in our concern with the immediate situation in Europe, we must never lose sight of the fact that there are 65.6 million forcibly displaced people worldwide, 22.5 million refugees and 10 million stateless people. How on earth can we have a stable world—never mind the humanitarian, moral challenges—unless we work flat out with our neighbours in Europe and the international community to have effective international strategies to tackle this? How can we tackle its source and ensure that young people who are without work or hope in their own communities have some opportunity of finding work and some kind of future?

Hamas

Lord Judd Excerpts

Tuesday 31st October 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, the noble Lord is straying into Foreign Office territory, on which I am not yet an expert. I shall have to get back to him on that, if that is okay.

[Lord Judd (Lab)]

My Lords, while the actions of the military wing of Hamas have been wrong, totally unacceptable and cannot be condoned, is it not important to recognise in political terms that Hamas is a pluralist organisation? Is it not vital to strengthen the more moderate elements within Hamas, particularly at this time of reconciliation between the PLO and Hamas? Should we not remember that in our own history, starting with John Major and pursued by the Labour Government that followed, we began to make progress on a solution in Northern Ireland when it was recognised that we must find ways of talking to the political wing of the IRA?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, as I said earlier, we will not provide a running commentary on any proscribed organisations. I have already laid out some of what we expect from Hamas.

Security in the UK

Lord Judd Excerpts

Monday 10th July 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Judd (Lab)]

My Lords, I hope I will be forgiven if I start by saying that the concept of security can be very subjective. I think that if you talk today to thousands of people in Britain living in multi-storey blocks, their primary concern about security is about whether they are going to live securely and stably in their homes. I do not think it takes very much imagination to begin to draw lines between that reality, all that lies behind it and the issues which have preoccupied us in this debate.

I am one of those who believe absolutely fundamentally that ultimately the battle against terrorism is a battle for hearts and minds. In the context of this debate, we have had some very significant contributions from very experienced people which have strengthened my conviction. I was greatly heartened when the noble Baroness, Lady Manningham-Buller, made the point that we have to look at the context and see the interrelationships and cannot look at the subject on too narrow a front. To hear her say that was indeed powerful.

In the same way, I thought my noble friend Lord Harris was making much the same point when he said that, in the end, there can be no absolute security and we should not pander to false illusions that there can be. What matters is society making rational choices about how it is going to allocate its resources: how much should go into building a society worth living in and how much should go into policing that society. That argument will never go away. It is a very real argument and has effects on people.

I have observed in my own life that terrorism thrives when there is a climate of ambivalence around, and of alienation and disaffection. Substantial numbers of people are not leaping out of their beds every morning and saying “These horrible things, how can they happen, how can we get these people and obliterate them?”. Many of them are saying, “How absolutely horrible these things are, and we would not be able to participate in anything like that ourselves, but perhaps, just perhaps, these people are on our side”. We have to face up to that. There is therefore a social dimension to terrorism and how we tackle it. There needs to be very intensive concentration on the provision of social infrastructure, particularly where communities find themselves in the midst of a large and growing number of people from completely different backgrounds. There must be good schools, good hospitals and good policing.

Several noble Lords have stressed in the debate today the importance of community policing, which is music to my ears, because I just do not understand how we can seriously take a stand against terrorism if we are not giving priority to community policing. It is not just about policemen going into the community to be the eyes and ears of the state in that community; it is about policemen building relationships with that community in which they actually enlist the community and create a shared sense of responsibility for ensuring the security that is necessary.

But we also have to be very clear about counterproductivity. I sometimes think that my biggest concern about the fight against terrorism is the danger of counterproductivity. Whatever the nature of terrorism and whatever its motivation, it is determined to reveal our society as hypocritical and ill founded, and our institutions as not worth having. We have to be very careful that we do not play into that sinister and manipulative argument. That is why, however tough the challenges and however real the immediate pressure on people in the front line, we have to maintain the highest standards of human rights and to ensure that our system of justice remains as transparent as it can possibly be. Of course I am a realist and realise that some of that justice cannot be transparent in a fight against terrorism, but we have to make sure that “because it cannot always be” does not become a convenient way of beginning to say more and more that the justice system is not going to be transparent. It needs to be transparent, and people need to have confidence in the system of justice. All these things matter tremendously, and I thought the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chelmsford made a very wise and thoughtful intervention about how we will win the battles in the fight against terrorism.

There is also an international dimension. I cannot accept that what we are doing in foreign policy has no implications for stability here. I was talking about alienation and disaffection. If we parade the significant part that we played in bringing about the arms trade treaty and claim credit for it but then refuse to stand up to the Saudi Arabians for what they are doing in Yemen, that has a direct relationship with the growth of alienation and dissolution, which becomes prey to manipulation by terrorist recruiters.

We have to be consistent, transparent and convincing in our foreign policy. Even journalists are now picking up the reality that, whatever may be said about victory in Mosul, this is about distorted minds: it is not just a physical defeat in battle. The terrorists will melt away and reassemble in other situations. Until we diminish the conceptions in the mind, we will always be on the defensive.

I applaud the police, the fire services—my God, I applaud the intelligence services—and all those involved, the medical and ambulance services and the rest, but this can become a sentimental rant. If we really value these people, how are we demonstrating that? How are we giving them pride of place in our society? We have been incredibly well blessed by the loyalty and devotion of our public services in a situation that has become intolerable given the great success, triumph and esteem of those who make money over those who serve the community.

All these things have to be brought together. There is no simple approach in which we can take one segment on its own and stand it up: they all interrelate.

I am most concerned that in all this we understand that, whether we like it or not, we are born into an international, interdependent community. There is no way that we can have an intelligence stand against extremism and terrorism on a national basis. Any effective stand must be made with others; we have to work with others. I have had the privilege of listening on Select Committees to people working in the area of policing and other spheres on an international basis. Let us call a spade a spade. I am not trying to refight the referendum—I am one of those who, however desperately unhappy, accepts the result of the referendum. If you have a referendum, you must accept the result. But virtually every person whom I heard who operates in this sphere talking to us on Select Committees said that of course pulling out of Europe is potentially a weakening of our security and police arrangements, because crime, drugs and trafficking—certainly terrorism—are all international issues.

Some people would argue that we have to keep a sense of proportion about this: we are particularly good at our policing and intelligence; will we not be weakening our position if we get ourselves bogged down with too many people internationally? The wiser people—my impression was that they were wiser; that was probably because I agreed with them—were saying no, you are only as strong as the weakest link. If you are to have an effective operation, where there is weakness, where things are not up to scratch, you need to be working at improving the situation internationally, not running away from it.

There is a huge and incredibly complex challenge here. I come back to what I said earlier: it is a battle for hearts and minds, and minds will win. Minds are influenced by hope, having a stake in a society that is worth living in, and individuals having a future and a stake in something that matters to their families, and the rest. That is how we will win. We have to be resolute in building social solidarity.

Brexit: Acquired Rights (EUC Report)

Lord Judd Excerpts

Tuesday 4th July 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Judd (Lab)]

My Lords, those were very important legal observations from someone with a particularly distinguished legal career behind him. It will be important to hear a clear answer to what was covered.

I am a member of this sub-committee. I put on record what a privilege and joy that has been. We have an outstanding chairman in my noble friend Lady Kennedy of The Shaws. She is always lively and stimulating, enabling us to work well together to produce particularly useful observations. I thank her most warmly.

It is totally unacceptable how long it has taken the Government to reply to this report, given the importance of the issue with which it deals. Much more importantly, there is all the anxiety and distress meanwhile suffered by ordinary people in this country and abroad. I do not like living in a Britain where that kind of distress is unnecessarily suffered by people who live here or where my fellow citizens serving abroad, often to very good effect, or living abroad after distinguished lives are equally in anxiety. I ask myself what kind of Britain we want to be. Of course, it would be a great thing if we had acted forthrightly and decisively right at the beginning. That would have earned us immense standing in the world. Yet we wasted that opportunity and anything we do now will be trying desperately to regain ground lost in terms of our place in the world.

I am also concerned because the Government we have at the moment always stress strongly and repeatedly their commitment to family. As my noble friend put so well in her introductory remarks, what is this doing to the whole concept of family and all the love, emotion and relationships that go into family life? Why are we continuing to perpetrate all this uncertainty?

We had a particularly telling morning in the committee when we took evidence from the French, Romanian and Polish ambassadors. It was not an easy morning. They were very forthcoming to the committee. When we asked them what had been the immediate impact on their work in this country as representatives of the people of their countries, they were all in agreement that they had been besieged by numerous people worried stiff about their future well-being and status.

We are not just relying on what was said in a committee such as ours by the ambassadors. We think of our own lives. I live in one of a small set of houses, a close-knit community in rural Cumbria. One of my fellow citizens is a Polish lady who has worked hard in a professional capacity in Leeds. Her husband is a Yorkshireman of Irish origin. They are very sincere Catholics. They are a lovely couple. She was in tears about the situation immediately after the vote on 23 June. This is also what the ambassadors said: their people have come to them, saying, “We had been making homes here, we had felt part of the community in which we lived. Suddenly we find ourselves strangers with no certainty about our future”. This Polish lady said what was wonderful was how, at work in Leeds, her colleagues rallied round her in no time at all. They were only upset that she was so upset. In personal terms, they did a great deal to reassure her. I am very upset myself that we can be generating these kinds of social and emotional realities in our midst. These are people. They are people with children—as my noble friend said, they have grannies and the rest. It is terribly urgent not only that we get a convincing formal reply from the Government to our report but that we settle this matter. We should have done so right at the beginning.

One of the things I came to appreciate in my schooling many years ago was, in the history of Europe, the importance of citizenship. It is a fact that, through the referendum on 23 June last year, we unilaterally stripped thousands of people of their citizenship. They had European citizenship to which they believed they would be entitled in perpetuity. There may have been all sorts of qualifications at the time that that was agreed but this is what they believed. They always built their lives in Britain on that basis and we removed that. That doubles the urgency and importance of making sure that whatever we do is watertight and generous. I repeat that word, “generous”, because we owe so much in this country to many of these people for what they have done for us. It is crucial we get nothing less than a generous settlement that puts the situation in unquestionably legally enforceable statutes.

Criminal Finances Bill

Lord Judd Excerpts

3rd reading (Hansard): House of Lords & Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 25th April 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Judd (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare an interest: I was Minister for Overseas Development, before moving on to the Foreign Office. I have served both professionally and voluntarily in the development sphere in various non-governmental organisations, including as director of VSO and subsequently Oxfam. To all of us involved in that work, the importance of the Bill, which I very much endorse, and of the amendment that has just been spoken to, cannot be overemphasised. Indeed, I noticed the other day that the Prime Minister, in saying in the Conservatives’ election campaign that they will stand by their commitment on overseas aid, emphasised that what was important was to make sure that the aid was being spent in the most effective way and not wasted.

It is terribly important to recognise that the people of too many developing countries are being robbed by their leaders, and that existing arrangements enable those leaders to get away with it. If we are going to talk about the effective use of aid, it seems to me that where we have the authority to take highly relevant and effective steps, we should do so. Yes, of course, we must put on record that Britain has taken great steps to provide world leadership in this sphere. It is leading the world already. That is why the remaining gaps are very ugly anomalies. I do not like to put it in these crude terms but it always seems to me that people either have some reason for not implementing immediately what is proposed or they do not, and if they do not, let us do it. If they are going to find ways of delaying—having still to work out arrangements and so on—this must raise suspicions that arrangements are going to be made in other respects as well.

From that standpoint, I say simply that, with all my experience in this sphere, this is a crucial matter. I congratulate the noble Baroness and her co-signatories on having stood by their guns. I hope the amendment will be taken seriously because I believe there could be a very important consensus in this House if we are prepared to put ourselves on record.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I wanted to intervene earlier in this debate following the speech of my noble friend Lord Kirkhope because I, too, wish to refer to Mr Cameron and the G8 summit.

First, I shall say that Amendment 8 is unnecessary but harmless, so I shall support it—but Amendment 14 is wrong and misguided for a number of reasons. First, we have no right, neither legal nor moral, to seek to impose our rules on law-abiding, self-governing British Overseas Territories. When I hear some of the NGOs outside this House talking about our overseas territories, I am appalled at their old-style colonial arrogance. One notorious campaigner against so-called tax havens has even suggested in his book that they should be closed down and the natives made to depend on overseas aid once again—and he calls himself moral. He is also one of the architects behind these proposals. I believe that we have no moral right because the United Kingdom creates more dodgy shell companies than some of the tightly regulated overseas territories and Crown dependencies. We need to come up to their standard, not the other way round.

Secondly, we should not impose these public register rules because the rules themselves are rubbish, as I shall attempt to explain. Not a single other country in the OECD is implementing this—and they have made clear that they never will. This public register wheeze was invented by my right honourable friend Mr Cameron in 2013. No other country will touch it with a barge-pole and the only reason that he was so keen then to foist this system on the overseas territories was so that he could point to others being in the same boat as himself and would not look isolated.

I was involved in the background at that time and had a meeting with prominent NGOs prior to the G8 in 2013. I asked them why they were not campaigning against the real tax havens of this world—Luxembourg, Delaware, Mauritius et cetera—but targeting the good guys such as our overseas territories. They responded that they had no chance of influencing policy in those tax havens, but that Mr Cameron was so desperate for a win at the G8 that he and the overseas territories were an easy, soft target.

I should make it clear for the record that at that point I was the director of the Cayman Islands office in London but that I have no connection whatever, either financial or otherwise, with the Cayman Islands Government now. However, I still deeply admire the way the territory is run and the exceptional level of integrity that it brings to financial services, which is greater than in the United Kingdom. I shall attempt to justify that.

Why do I say that our UK policy is farcical? Because it says that the way to get at dodgy persons setting up dodgy shell companies is to have a public register so that nosey parker NGOs can trawl through them and out those people. No—what you must do is stop them setting up dodgy shell companies in the first place. Jersey and Cayman are the top jurisdictions in the world, with by far the tightest regulations and checks on people setting up dodgy shell companies.

A few years ago an Australian professor at Griffith University, Professor Jason Sharman, did a huge experiment with his team on setting up shell companies. They created dozens of email and other addresses at different places around the world, from Islamabad, Nigeria and Moscow to London, New York and elsewhere. Many of the locations were highly reputable; others were places where you should hang on to your wallet if you get an e-mail saying you have £10 million to invest within them. The researchers sent messages to hundreds of corporate service providers around the world, which varied in credibility from, “We wish to establish an export base in your country for our long-established company” to messages from addresses in Pakistan saying, “We have a few million dollars and want to set up some companies in complete secrecy and want some fake bank accounts”. What was astonishing, according to Professor Jason Sharman’s research, is that while the majority of CSPs did not respond to the latter, highly suspicious messages—or told them to get lost—a very large number responded and were willing to help.

Professor Sharman’s team invented a rating system for the responses—and guess who came out top as the most difficult, indeed impossible, places in which to set up fake shell companies without supplying beneficial ownership information? Yes, it was little old Cayman and Jersey. I have Professor Sharman’s chart here, with them achieving 100%. Who was at the bottom of the heap, where you could almost walk in with a suitcase full of terrorist cash and set up a company with no questions asked? It was not Panama but individual states in the United States such as Delaware, Montana and Wyoming. They are way down at the bottom of the chart.

There are 2 million new companies created in the United States every single year. If you want to set up a dodgy shell company, you go to the United States—or rather, you go on to email and do it in under half an hour for less than $300. These states have said quite bluntly that they do not care what the President signs up to at federal level or at the OECD; they are in charge of company registrations in their state and will never in a million years go for public or central registers. They will not go for any more scrutiny before setting up companies.

Where does the United Kingdom come into this? Unfortunately, your Lordships can guess who was 13th from the bottom of the heap—below Vietnam, Panama and Ukraine. Yes, the United Kingdom was 13th from the bottom on creating dodgy shell companies, because we do it with insufficient verification of the beneficial owners. So clobbering Cayman, Bermuda and the BVI with rules which only they, not the other 19 countries of the OECD, would follow is misguided and foolish. I agree with my noble friend Lord Hodgson that we do not make the world a better or a more transparent place by hitting the good guys, encouraging the bad and letting all the Mugabes of this world go to the real tax havens to set up accounts.

Neither does the OECD ask for these public registers. The OECD merely wants all legitimate authorities to get speedy access to the relevant information so that the police, security services and financial regulators can check the legality of owners and their transactions. That is the point of access to beneficial information. I know that the Cayman Islands has been providing that information without any objection whatever for the last 10 years and has now implemented a system to give that information to legitimate authorities within 24 hours, seven days a week. That is a far better system than publishing registers.

It is perfectly legitimate for many individuals to create companies and seek to keep the ownership information private. There is no right for the public, nor for anti-capitalist NGOs, to know who owns private companies. But there is a need for legitimate law enforcement authorities to get speedy access to that information—and the overseas territories are in the forefront of providing it. What is more, I know that the information provided by the Cayman Islands, for example, will be verified by the authorities—as opposed to what will be supplied by Companies House, which does not verify the accuracy of anything. It is left to individuals to say to Companies House, “I promise that I’m telling the truth and I am who I say I am”. The overseas territories do not accept that.

So I ask this: will my noble friend the Minister give me an assurance that, in due course, the UK Government will make an attempt to get our beneficial ownership information in Companies House as up to scratch and as good as that in the best of the OTs? Our overseas territories should be lauded, not criticised, for their work on financial services. For these reasons, I oppose Amendment 14 and believe it should be rejected.

Brexit: UK-EU Security (EUC Report)

Lord Judd Excerpts

Tuesday 7th February 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Judd (Lab)]

My Lords, like everyone else who has spoken, I put on record my tremendous appreciation to the noble Baroness, Lady Prashar, for what I think is a first-class report that is a hard-hitting report in the very best sense—as a focused report, it is a model—and tribute is therefore due to all the members of her committee, to the officials who worked with them and to the witnesses, who are tremendously important. I often think that in our debates here we do not look enough at the evidence given as the basis for the committee’s conclusions, because often the evidence gives powerful argument.

In a reflective and wise intervention, my noble friend Lord Soley made almost in passing what is a crucial point, when he said that the approach in Britain to European matters has been that it is an economic initiative, whereas for almost everybody else in Europe it is a political matter. In the context of this debate, one reason that we are in the predicament that we are in is that we have never understood or embraced the concept that, when the original statesmen were founding the European Coal and Steel Community, it was important in itself as an economic and commercial matter but it was not the end; it was a means to an end. They were motivated and driven by the concept of the peaceful, secure Europe for which they were working. At every step which has taken place in the institutions, we have fallen into the self-deluding trap of saying, “We are looking at this just in economic terms”. Historically, it has never been just economic; it has been about building a Community. Now, in a very specific and immediate area, we are faced with the consequences of that.

I must declare an interest, because I serve on the justice committee. As I have listened to the debate, and as I read the report, it strikes me how much in common we are learning on the two committees. In the justice committee, particularly in the realms of matters such as family law or commercial law, we have heard witness after witness tell us that things are so much better, logical and helpful in the context of what has emerged than they were before.

This brings us to the issue of the referendum. Like everybody else, in this debate anyway, I accept that the referendum has happened. I deeply regret the outcome, but it has happened, and we have to approach things in the reality of that result. But that does not mean that we should shun the responsibility of learning from the experience of the referendum. The wicked reality of the referendum was that it was dominated by emotion and an absence of sufficient concentration on the reality of the situation.

Previously, I served on the home affairs committee under the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, and then the noble Baroness, Lady Prashar. What struck me when we looked at those matters at that time was that every single witness, as far as I could make out, who was operating in the sphere of policing and security said that it would be completely illogical to come out of the Community because, if they were to fulfil their task, what had happened and the co-operation taking place was essential to success. Some put it quite strongly, actually—I must commend them as officials.

It is a very serious matter, and we need to look at this. As a political community in this House, and in the Commons, irrespective of party, we bear a heavy historical responsibility because we have allowed the populist press to get away with running the argument and failed to communicate the reality, or even give the serious press the amount of information or support that they deserve.

I am not a lawyer and I have not served in the police or security services, although I have the utmost admiration for them. I look at these matters as a political animal. But what should we be learning from this? What does sovereignty mean in the age in which we live? How can we allow our debate and considerations to be dominated by this preoccupation with sovereignty? I cannot think of a single issue facing my children and grandchildren which can be properly solved in a completely national context. The way in which you look to the interests of British children, adults and the vulnerable is in an international context. Terrorism is international, as is crime and trafficking. None of those matters respects borders. Drugs are an international consideration.

How on earth does it advance the interests of the British people to say that we want to reassert our sovereignty and take back control for ourselves? That is not the way to look to the interests of the British people. We look to those interests by seeing that our future lies in our effectiveness in international co-operation and as leaders in international co-operation. When it comes to this business of wanting to free ourselves from the dominating and suffocating business of European law and European legal professions and the rest and take back these matters into our own hands, how many people realise that, in these new arrangements that are emerging to which I referred, so often it was British lawyers who took the lead in making them a success? Why is that not more strongly asserted?

I will conclude on this note. Clearly, we have some very hard work to do in the future, but an even greater challenge is enabling the British people to understand the reality of the age in which we are living. It does not matter only in the realm of trafficking, crime or migration; it matters in the realm of climate change. How do you solve climate change as a sovereign island on your own? You meet the challenges of climate change in the context of your international approach. It reaches into every dimension of government and politics. I have no doubt that history—if it survives as a discipline, under the crude pressures that operate today—will judge us on how far we, as political leaders, have enabled people to understand their global interdependence and how we, as political practitioners, develop and strengthen global institutions, not just European ones, to meet the realities with which we are confronted.

The concept of global interdependence, and of our being judged by the success we make of realising this and fulfilling our destiny within it, is the future strength of Britain. After the experience of the referendum, all of us, irrespective of party, clearly have a very big task and challenge to get our heads down and make sure that we make that our priority.

Immigration: Overseas Students

Lord Judd Excerpts

Thursday 17th November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Judd (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as a governor of LSE for 30 years and now an emeritus governor, and as a life member of court at Lancaster University and Newcastle University. I want not for the first time to put on the record my appreciation for the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, who introduced this debate. He has a long-standing and highly respected record of deep and informed interest in educational matters.

For me, it is a very special occasion to be able to speak in the same debate as that in which the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, has made her maiden speech. I have been a long-time admirer not just of what she stands for but of her effectiveness in achieving results.

We are at a very interesting moment in our history, because the Higher Education and Research Bill is coming up. I cannot separate consideration of this issue from what we will be considering over the coming months. The question I am sure I will pose again in the context of that debate is, what is a university? We all talk about the operation and organisation of universities, and now we are talking about the relationship of immigration to universities, but what is a university? For me, if a university is not about originality, imagination, vision and scholarship, it is not a university. It is very important for our country to have good vocational training centres, I am sure of that, but that does not make them universities.

My next point is that the inescapable first reality of life is that we are locked into an international community. Unfortunately, not enough of our fellow citizens understand this, but there is simply no way we can have a future as a nation without recognising that international interdependence and making it central to our whole purpose of governance and what we are trying to achieve. If we do not, we are betraying future generations. It is as simple as that, because there is no future for Britain unless we understand that and respond appropriately.

I believe, therefore, that the essence of a university is that it must, by definition, be a representation of the world, particularly when we like to parade such slogans as, “We are a world-class university”. How on earth can a university be world class unless it is a representation of the world? By definition, the quality of our education depends upon the international reality in the university community itself. The research depends upon it, the teaching depends upon it, the student experience depends upon it and the development of student potential depends upon it. It has to be not only intellectually understood but sensed at every level that we are indispensably part of an international community, and we are developing and approaching our learning in that context.

I have rather more hope on that score—and I really have applauded the vision that has been expressed in this debate—than the previous speaker apparently has, but I shall finish on a rather different point. I was very struck by a rather urgent message from the British Medical Association, which I am sure I am not alone in having received. I therefore quote unapologetically from it:

“Medicine thrives on the interchange of experience, knowledge and training across countries and backgrounds. We believe that further restrictions on international medical students coming to the UK through changes in immigration policy will inevitably lead to a consequent decrease in opportunities for UK medical students to study overseas and so limiting opportunities to collaborate and share experience, knowledge and training. We believe this will be detrimental for medicine, patient care and medical research”.

Given that we spend so much time in this place discussing the health service, are we going to take that message seriously? The BMA continues:

“Furthermore, international students who choose to study at a UK medical school are committed to training and working in the NHS and are considered as part of the future NHS workforce by NHS employers. These individuals have been factored into long-term NHS workforce planning and the opportunity to continue postgraduate training in the NHS helps make UK medical schools an attractive option for prospective students”.

The BMA says there is already evidence that the number of people wanting to study medicine here is declining. It makes the point that others have made, which I underline: it is not just a matter of immigration policy; sadly, it is symptomatic of a much bigger issue, which the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, emphasised. What does Britain look like to the world in 2016? What is the image of Britain? If we in this place do not take responsibility for that, I do not know what the hell we are here for.

EU: Unaccompanied Migrant Children (EUC Report)

Lord Judd Excerpts

Tuesday 1st November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Judd (Lab)]

My Lords, those last remarks are very powerful. It is important to bear in mind the cost in so many ways of not being positive and welcoming and embracing these refugees at their young and sensitive age. This has been a rather solemn debate with a lot of powerful contributions. Unless I completely misunderstand and misread the Minister, I am sure that, as the person she is, she will take it very much to heart and consider it not as a debate to be refuted and rejected but one to be embraced by the Government to see what they can do to try to make the best of a bad situation.

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Prashar. I had the privilege of serving on her committee and she and her colleagues have produced an outstanding report. The way that she introduced it tonight was effective and irresistible. My noble friend Lord Dubs mentioned one regret. If I have a regret, it is that we did not all focus on this report way back in the summer so that we could have had a better chance of influencing the Government. The report, after all, was published in July and it is now November before we debate it. We need to look at why it takes so long on such an important issue before we debate it and help the Government to focus.

Having mentioned my noble friend Lord Dubs, I want to say what a joy it is to have him in our midst and hear him speaking. He has been a fantastic leader to us all in terms of the personal stand that he has taken. I know that he does not really like me making these remarks, but one of the things that I find most important about him is that, having been through it all, he has not put it behind him; he lives with it and sees what that demands of him in current action. That is a very strong position and we are fortunate to have him challenging us and being so effective.

I am sorry that I cannot say this after she has spoken, but I am also very glad that the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, is here tonight. She is also someone who has been working very closely with the situation on the front line and is very much in touch with the realities and the people about whom we are talking tonight.

If I may, coming so much at the end of the debate, I want to mention one other person. The noble Lord, Lord Cormack, demonstrated tonight his humanity and sensitivity. It was rather a courageous speech to make from his position, and we should all welcome the fact that he made it.

Having listened to the debate, it seems that there are certain questions outstanding that I will emphasise. First, what plans does the Home Office have to create expedited family reunions and “Dubs transfers” in other EU countries such as Greece and Italy to stop children feeling forced to make their way to France and to attempt dangerous journeys across to the UK? What will now be the situation of new children who, whatever has happened, perhaps inevitably still arrive in Calais or the French coast? How will we be able to ensure that they are able to access family reunion or “Dubs transfers”?

How will the Minister ensure that unaccompanied and separated children in England and Wales are not disadvantaged and receive the same level of protection as those in Scotland and Northern Ireland, who have access to independent guardians? The role of independent guardians has been emphasised in the deliberations this evening. For children who have been through this kind of trauma and experience, one cannot overemphasise the importance of having a reliable friend to whom they can turn and who is with them, taking their hand and walking with them into the future to try to make a life in our midst. It is really shameful that we in England are lagging behind Scotland and Northern Ireland.

What will the arrangements be to ensure satisfactory follow-up and monitoring of what is happening to these youngsters in their long-term future? What will happen when they turn 18 to make sure that the backing is there to enable them to make the best of their lives in terms of further or higher education or whatever?

The noble Lord, Lord Cormack, remembered meeting refugees at the end of the Second World War. I am not trying to one-up him, but I was taken by my parents to an international summer camp in Scotland in 1943 for refugee children mixing with young British children, and it was a very good and enjoyable occasion. I remember at the tender age of eight being so impressed by the spirit of these children after what they had been through. There were even youngsters who had come from Norway across the North Sea in open boats to get to England. This was all happening in a grand baronial Victorian castle in Scotland called Drumtochty Castle. As I say, it was a very important experience in my formation as a youngster.

What has happened to us as a nation? We played a leading role in the creation of the United Nations and provided some of the most outstanding civil servants to serve that organisation with dedication, of whom Brian Urquhart was a particularly great example. We played a key part in the formation of UNHCR, as we did in the formation of UNICEF, and under a Conservative Government we played a key part in achieving the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. We had a sense of international belonging and international responsibility. We were proud of that and wanted it to be the hallmark of the nation in which we were living. What has happened to it?

If we are to have a future outside the European Union—and, again, the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, made the point most powerfully and rightly—how are we going to build an alternative? What are we going to do? Are we going to regenerate and put the resources, leadership and drive that should be in place to create a new and stronger future for UNHCR, UNICEF, the World Bank and the UN itself? Where is the evidence that we are planning for that? It is not just about our trade, although of course it matters desperately, but what is the real role in the world that we want to play and how are we planning for it?

I conclude by simply making this point. Do not let us think that this is a one-off situation, because it is not. With global climate change and all the instability in the world, we are going to see this story repeated in one way or another over and over again. Let us think about the children, the mothers and the fathers who have been dying in despair as they drown, trying to escape tyranny and oppression. We must think of the predicament of those children who have made it here. Let us remember that the same thing is happening right now in Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, east and west Africa, and in the Horn of Africa. There are children in those places who are every bit as desperate. If we as a nation are to have any kind of future at all in which we can take pride, we must base it on a commitment second to none in terms of humanity and world responsibility. Our participation in the international institutions is going to become more important than it has ever been.