Immigration Bill

Debate between Lord Roberts of Llandudno and Earl of Sandwich

Tuesday 9th February 2016 Grand Committee

[Lord Roberts of Llandudno (LD)]

It gives me the greatest pleasure to support the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Dubs. Sometimes a situation will sweep through a country and bring compassion and tears to so many people. This is the case especially after the last weekend, when we saw the continuing destruction of Aleppo, with scores of thousands of people crowding on the border between Syria and Turkey. They will somehow move from there. They will join that trek, like hundreds of thousands before them, to some sort of hope. Many of them will be children.

I know that in Wales we sometimes have very sad cases where a child has been abducted or put in some danger and people say, “We’ve got to do something to save this child”. Whole communities will rally round to save that child, and so we should. Except it is not one child, but scores of thousands of children. But if we will do it for one child, so we should be prepared to embrace the children that are there—we cannot see the one child because of the hordes of other children. It is a matter of individuals, of little toddlers. I have seven grandchildren myself. They are usually fairly well behaved—not always—but you would defend them and speak for them. You would do anything. You would rather be hurt yourself than they be hurt.

We now have a situation with many unaccompanied children. I think of the parable of the good Samaritan. I should not bring my Sunday sermon here, but in that parable we remember that a traveller on the road—I am not preaching—from Jerusalem to Jericho fell among thieves. There he was, left at the side of the road. He had been robbed of everything. Two temple officers came by and said, “We’d better not touch him. We could be contaminated if he is dead”. They kept on talking. I imagine that they would have met in Jericho and one would have turned to the other and said, “You know, it’s a dangerous situation on that road from Jerusalem to Jericho. Let’s set up a committee to safeguard these people who travel along that road”. Now, we want committees; of course we do. What would we do without them? The House of Lords would be abolished tomorrow if we abolished committees. But that person was still at the side of that road until a Samaritan came who cared for him, took him to the inn and made sure that he was on the way to being well again.

We have a tragic situation from Syria to Calais and Dunkirk, but we need people who will not first go to a committee, but say, “Something needs to be done. We have to act now”. I mentioned yesterday in Questions our debt to the thousands of young people in particular who are in the camps and on some of the Greek islands and sacrificing so much to be there. We owe them a tremendous debt. It is the Red Cross, Calais Action, the Refugee Council and Save the Children—they are there. These are the people with their hands to the wheel in those places.

What are we going to do? If we say that the UK will do no more, where will those children go? Possibly they are asking on the Turkish/Syrian border now, “Where do we go?”. They get to Calais or Dunkirk and they say, “Where do we go?”. Are we going to pull up the drawbridge and say, “You can’t come here?”. If we do, we condemn these children not only in the present time. If they live through the present time to a childhood scarred with memories it will not be to the well-being of the rest of us. Action needs to be taken for the tens of thousands of children as if it was for just one child, for just one of my seven grandchildren.

It is a big undertaking, of course it is, but Canada has taken 25,000 refugees in two months. It was great, seeing that happen and hearing that an appeal went out on the radio in Canada when that first plane arrived at Lester Pearson Airport in Toronto: “Please, will no more people come to the airport? We’re under siege with people wanting to welcome these people from Syria”. The heart of the people is with those people who are tramping across borders or suffering in the camps.

In 1939, we said that we would accept our responsibility for people threatened by the blitz on our large cities—Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham and London, of course—and in two months there were arrangements for evacuating 3 million people. We could do it. If we could do it for 3 million people in 1939, we can do it for 3,000 children now. I do not think there is any reason for us not to do it. I cannot think of a valid reason to come to this Committee and say, “Oh, yes, it’s this; it’s this; it’s this”. They are tiny children, like our children. I urge the Government to think again. I assure noble Lords that Heathrow, Gatwick or Stansted would be under siege by the warm-hearted people of the UK wanting to embrace and welcome them. I urge the Government from the bottom of my heart to think again on this.

[The Earl of Sandwich (CB)]

My Lords, I can see the point of the Government’s plan to collect child refugees from the Middle East, but the thousands of children who were seen on our television screens in October and November last year were already in Europe. The impression at the moment is that the Government are refusing to respond to what has become a public demand. I strongly support the noble Lord, Lord Dubs. This is not just an emotional issue; it is a case of practicality. The Government are talking about an admirable resettlement scheme, but, except in the case of family reunion, they are ignoring unaccompanied minors and ignoring this plea.

Immigration Bill

Debate between Lord Roberts of Llandudno and Earl of Sandwich

Wednesday 20th January 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Roberts of Llandudno (LD)]

My Lords, first, I welcome all those who now support so vigorously and enthusiastically the right of asylum seekers to work after, say, six months. They have such potential. I know they are not asylum seekers but a third of the doctors and consultants in the hospitals and half the nurses in north Wales are not of Welsh extraction; they are from overseas. We rely on each other. If you go to the hospitals in Liverpool, the same story is told. We work together; we are one world. We have a responsibility towards each other—a responsibility, I suggest, to help everybody, wherever they are from, to reach their potential and to contribute as much as they can to the well-being of the whole community.

I am not going to speak at great length—I would be very unpopular if I did. In any case, everybody else has said what I wanted to say. It is wonderful that we are in an atmosphere of wanting this policy to succeed.

I will say just one thing. Last night I was at a meeting where we spoke of the children in the camps at Calais and Dunkirk. At Dunkirk there are no facilities, and we have all seen the pictures of the children tramping in the mud, which in places is a foot deep. One contributor last night said, “You know, they haven’t had any education for 12 months. They haven’t had any schooling. They are missing out”. Many of those of Arab extraction who are coming to the UK—people who speak the languages of other nations—could become the teachers who help this new generation, and in helping that new generation I am sure we will be doing something to build the kind of world that Lloyd George talked about. He once said that he wanted to build a country fit for heroes to live in. Let us build a world fit for children to live in. We can do it in this Bill by adopting amendments such as the one that is proposed here.

[The Earl of Sandwich]

My Lords, I am always heartened by the words of the noble Lord, Lord Roberts. I remember one rather lonely evening when he moved a version of this amendment and there were not so many friends present as there are today. I see already that he is heartened by the voices from all around the Committee.

I am strongly in favour of extending the time available to migrants and asylum seekers because it is realistic. It recognises and legalises a situation that is already happening. As my noble friend said, the issue of permission to work is linked to concerns about destitution, which we will come to in Part 5 when we discuss Section 95 support. As Sir Keir Starmer said about Clause 8 in the Commons, the most vulnerable will become even more so if we do not pass this amendment. For example, making it a specific crime to work without leave drives the exploited and enslaved further underground.

There is one more point which needs to be underlined. The Immigration Minister said during Committee in the Commons that asylum seekers could frustrate the process of application in order to qualify for the permission, and I expect that the Minister has this argument in mind this evening. But the amendment addresses this point—and the Refugee Council makes this clear—because permission would be granted only where the delay was in the process and not due to any action taken by the asylum seeker.