Amnesty for Undocumented Migrants

Adam Holloway Excerpts

Monday 19th July 2021 Westminster Hall

[Adam Holloway (Gravesham) (Con) [V]]

It is a great pleasure to speak under your chairmanship, Mr Hosie. My speech will be quite short.

Most migrants to the UK have taken the trouble to apply properly through our immigration system. Here in Gravesend we live with highly successful immigration— notably, the Sikh community. But a blanket amnesty is not sensible if it applies to every undocumented migrant. Potentially, this proposal would allow tens of thousands of people—more perhaps—who are in the UK illegally to regularise their status. I entirely sympathise with their desire to build a better life, and I might do exactly the same thing myself if I were in their circumstances, but an amnesty like this would do nothing to reduce illegal immigration, which is what we are trying to do, and it would act as an additional pull factor to those wishing to come to the UK.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Tom Hunt) points out, an amnesty like this is akin to having open borders. It means our immigration system would no longer be rules based. He raises the interesting point that if the Labour party put this in an election manifesto, it might not be a vote winner.

Finally, I entirely support any effort to attract undocumented people to vaccination centres without fear.

Misuse of Drugs Act

Adam Holloway Excerpts

Thursday 17th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Adam Holloway (Gravesham) (Con) [V]]

In my experience, drug addiction is very clearly an illness. Opiate addiction, for example, is a health problem. As we have heard very passionately from three speakers today, we urgently need to move from a criminal justice response to a health response.

A couple of weeks ago, I spent 10 days or so in the US going round homeless shelters on the east coast and looking at what is probably a historic opportunity to stabilise the street homeless population coming out of the pandemic. Of course, the problem of street homelessness in the US is somewhat different from the one we have here, given the benefits that are available to pay for housing here, but they share the common thread that very large numbers of the street homeless are mentally ill or drug addicted.

I spent an extraordinary day with Professor Jim O’Connell, who set up Boston Health Care for the Homeless back in the mid-’80s, when he realised that street homeless people did not have medical records. He now has an enormous operation. One of the things that he does is what the hon. Member for Edinburgh East (Tommy Sheppard) described very movingly as “overdose prevention”; he has a tarmac area, half the size of a tennis court, called the Southampton comfort station, where opiate-addicted people come and shoot themselves up with fentanyl.

I used to be a TV reporter, and I had the same emotional response to seeing those 200 people shooting up, staggering, preparing to inject themselves, as if they were on a picnic or rolling a cigarette. It was an appalling scene. It was—I do not know—like I imagine somehow hell would be. I would not want to live one second of any of those people’s lives. Pam and Sue from Professor O’Connell’s operation wait there to get people breathing again when they have had an inaccurate dose of fentanyl.

As I say, the overwhelming majority of street homeless people here are drug addicted or mentally ill. Whatever someone’s route to addiction, and whatever judgments we want to make about these things, the reality is that these people are addicted. They have a very serious illness. I have taken opiates for pain relief, and I can absolutely see how someone could very quickly become addicted to this stuff.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Reigate (Crispin Blunt) and the hon. Members for Edinburgh East and for Manchester, Withington (Jeff Smith) have said, we have to be pragmatic about this. We have to have a grown-up discussion to find a humane way out of it, not just for the people who are addicted but for wider society. We need to think about all things—at the very least about having overdose prevention places, but also about prescribing, decriminalisation and moving this out of the criminal justice sphere. These people are ill, and, as the hon. Member for Manchester, Withington said, we cannot arrest our way out of this problem.

English Channel: Illegal Seaborne Immigration

Adam Holloway Excerpts

Wednesday 30th January 2019 Westminster Hall

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered illegal seaborne immigration across the English Channel.

May I say what a joy it is to see you in the Chair, Sir Christopher? I am sure that we will all benefit from your benign chairmanship. I thank Mr Speaker for granting me this debate, and I welcome the Minister and other hon. Members present.

The debate is about the number of people who are crossing the English channel illegally—often in very small unsailable, risky craft—to get to the United Kingdom. That is extremely dangerous; it has been described by the police as like

“trying to cross the M25 at rush-hour on foot.”

It is also driven by illegal people trafficking. Far too many of those who are successful remain in the United Kingdom, whether or not their claim is justifiable.

As I understand it, in 2018, 543 asylum seekers crossed the English channel illegally, including 438 in the last few months, October to December, of 2018. I invite the Minister to confirm those figures in her response. A lot of people are making that very risky crossing and those figures account only for those who make it. I would like to know from Her Majesty’s Government if there is any estimate of the number of people who have died at sea trying to make the crossing.

The main route is across the short straits between Dover and Calais, which cover only 22 or 23 miles. Recent reports, however, say that some asylum seekers try to make an even longer crossing. In January, four Iranians were caught near Mablethorpe in Lincolnshire, having travelled across the North sea from Belgium—a journey 10 times longer than across the short straits between Dover and Calais. A lot of those people arrive along our coast, either on deserted stretches of the coastline or in small towns and villages. Their aim is to seek asylum. What concerns me and my constituents is that it is not only extremely risky activity that is dangerous to those seeking to cross the channel and to shipping, but it is effectively fuelled by horrendous people—the people traffickers—who charge those poor people a lot of money for the equipment to try to get across the channel.

There is also a security risk. The No. 1 priority of Her Majesty’s Government is to defend this nation. We do not know who those people are, where they come from or what their intentions are, and that activity needs to be stopped. The simplest way to stop it is this: if people are intercepted crossing the channel, they should be taken back to the ports from where they came, whether in France, Belgium or elsewhere.

[Adam Holloway (Gravesham) (Con)]

When I was a television reporter I lived undercover in the Sangatte camp in Calais, and spent several weeks trying to get into the UK. I entirely agree with my hon. Friend; the only way that we can stop the economic migrants—I would do exactly the same in their position, but they are economic migrants, not refugees, because they pass through many safe countries—is to break the idea that getting into Britain or Europe means they can stay there. Until we do that, the problem will go on and on.

[Mr Hollobone]

I could not have put it better myself; my hon. Friend is exactly right. Those people need to be taken back to France, whether they are intercepted trying to cross the channel or after they have arrived in the United Kingdom.

I would like to know what we are doing to stop that illegal people trafficking. My understanding is that two Border Force cutters are bobbing around somewhere in the English channel. I am told that two more are on the way, because we had lent them to the EU to patrol the Mediterranean. Can the Minister confirm that there are two Border Force cutters in the English channel and that two more will be added to that number, and when that will happen? I understand that Border Force has a total of five cutters and six coastal patrol vessels at its disposal. Where are all those vessels deployed and what are they doing?

The Royal Navy has a patrol vessel in the channel, but I am reliably informed by sources in the Government that the Royal Navy actually has very little to do with Border Force operations. Its deployment is therefore probably just a cosmetic exercise by Her Majesty’s Government in order to seem tough on the issue. I have the highest regard for the sailors of the Royal Navy and for those who serve on the Border Force cutters—they do their best in difficult circumstances—but I am not convinced that the Home Office or the Ministry of Defence is taking the issue seriously enough. In her response, can the Minister outline what vessels we have in the English channel and what they are doing exactly? Have they intercepted any asylum seekers and, if they have, have they taken them back to France or Belgium, or have they simply ensured safe passage to these shores?

The Government have spent £6 million on new security equipment for the French, including CCTV, night goggles and automatic number plate recognition equipment, for deployment in ports on the French coast. I welcome that if it is true, but I am not quite sure why we, rather than the French, have to pay for it. That compares with the £148 million that Her Majesty’s Government have spent since 2014 on extra security at the port of Calais. I would like to see aerial surveillance close to the French coast, so that if small boats are detected trying to cross the channel, information can be relayed quickly to the French authorities, who can intercept them. Will the Minister tell the House whether the French have any vessels patrolling those waters? The rumour is that they have one French navy patrol boat doing something off the French coast. Is that true? Have any French vessels intercepted any asylum seekers and, if so, do they take them back to France, or do they offer them safe passage across the channel?

I understand that we have a comprehensive naval agreement between the Royal Navy and the French equivalent, covering a variety of defence and security issues. Under that agreement, is there any way in which we can have shared patrols so that wherever people are intercepted in the channel, they are taken back to France? It seems to me that the picture painted from all the television coverage is that if people are intercepted at sea, they have effectively made it—if intercepted at sea, they will be brought to the British coast. That acts as a magnet for people to try the passage, because they know that they do not have to get across the 23 miles; they only have to make it to the 12-mile limit and, once they have crossed it, they will be picked up and brought over to this country.

There is something called the Dublin convention, or the Dublin regulation, whereby if someone claims asylum in the United Kingdom and has been in a safe country on their way here, we are entitled to return them to that country. Are we using that? My information is that since 2015 we have returned only 1,186 asylum seekers under those rules, but the number of people claiming asylum in this country is absolutely enormous—33,780 in 2017, I understand—so we seem to return a very small number to the safe countries through which they came.

It might be an accident of geography, but we are surrounded by safe countries—pretty much all those 33,780 asylum claimants will have come through one, two, three or more safe countries before reaching our shores. Under the EU regulation, they should be returned to the first safe country in which they arrived. Those EU countries, however, do not fingerprint arrivals when they come in, so no documentation proves that they entered the EU via Italy, Greece or Spain. Especially before we leave the EU, we should insist that our present European partners enforce the regulation.

What will we do once we have left the European Union? Non-EU countries are attached to the Dublin regulation, so the idea that we have to be in the EU for it to work is simply not the case. Are we preparing the ground so that, once we leave, we can still be a member of the convention and return asylum seekers?

I also understand that 80,813 asylum applications were refused or withdrawn between 2010 and 2016, which is 80,813 asylum claimants whose claims were refused or withdrawn. Is that figure correct, and is it correct that of that number only 26,659, or 33%, were actually deported? If we are to turn down people applying for asylum in this country, we need to deport them, because they are not legal asylum claimants—but we are simply not doing that. The problem is that if those people stay in this country, even though their claim was illegal, after five or more years they can claim indefinite leave to remain. That whole problem is fuelling people coming to this country illegally: basically, they know that they can get away with it.

Civitas published an excellent report recently. The author was one David Wood, who was dangerously overqualified: he worked at the Home Office for nine years, including as deputy chief executive of the UK Border Agency and as director-general of immigration enforcement; and before that he was 31 years in the Metropolitan police. He probably knows what he is talking about. I agree absolutely with what he makes clear:

“There needs to be a two-pronged approach to the problem: to reduce the numbers of illegal immigrants who enter in the first place, and to improve the rate of removal for those who are refused asylum.”

The report goes on:

“The difficulty is that if claimants know that all they have to do is to reach the UK, or Europe, claim asylum, and then disappear if the claim fails…then that is an incentive to pay criminals and take the risk of crossing the Mediterranean and, ultimately, the English Channel. The asylum system then becomes a tool of abuse for those we, as a country, have not provided with an entitlement to be here. Once an individual has been in a country unlawfully for a number of years, the courts are very reluctant to order their removal and many can then regularise their stay. Again, the unlawful entrants know this, and the systems incentivise deceptive behavior.”

He is absolutely right about that. What will the Minister do to tackle the issue?

A lot of the asylum seekers who cross the English Channel in small boats are, I understand, Iranians.

Oral Answers to Questions

Adam Holloway Excerpts

Monday 4th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Dame Caroline Spelman (Meriden) (Con)]

18. What steps he is taking to tackle extremism.

[Adam Holloway (Gravesham) (Con)]

22. What steps he is taking to tackle extremism.

[The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Sajid Javid)]

The 2015 counter-extremism strategy committed the Government for the first time to tackling the non-terrorist harm that extremism causes. Since 2015, supported by civil society groups, we have taken steps to protect public institutions from the threat of extremism.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sajid Javid]

I agree very much with my right hon. Friend. She will know that I am a big fan of the Near Neighbours scheme. Since 2011 the Government have committed more than £11 million to it, and there is a further £2.6 million agreed for the next two years. There may also be support available from the Government’s “Building a Stronger Britain Together” campaign.

[Adam Holloway]

My constituents will be absolutely aghast at the thought of people from organisations such as ISIS returning here. What steps can the Government take to prevent people from such organisations causing harm to our population?

[Sajid Javid]

My hon. Friend’s constituents are right to be aghast at that, and I fully understand that feeling. This is a Europe-wide issue, and I have already discussed it with some of my counterparts in Europe. We are making sure that individuals who return from conflict zones such as Syria are properly investigated and potentially prosecuted by police, and that if they do come back and live here we have proper restrictions in place.

Unaccompanied Child Refugees: Europe

Adam Holloway Excerpts

Thursday 2nd November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Adam Holloway (Gravesham) (Con)]

Many of the people in Calais come from war-torn areas such as Syria and Iraq. Indeed, shortly before the general election, I went with my former interpreter to the city of Mosul for about three hours and had a look around. As we approached the city—we were about 20 km away—we saw a great caravan filled with women in black and children. There were very few men. I remember seeing one lady carrying two babies, with a toddler walking behind.

The next day I went to one of the camps, which had taken in an extra 23,000 people in the previous week. The latrines by the entrance, which had been designed to last 17 months, were already overflowing after three weeks. There were many young people there who were in great need. It gives none of us pleasure to see pictures of young people in Calais, or at the edge of the Europe, living in such intense hardship. Of course we must help the young and the vulnerable, but we must not be naive and we must not create pull factors—or what my hon. Friend the Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke) described as migrant magnets.

[Heidi Allen]

While we can all have a debate ad nauseam about pull or push and will never agree on it, at least let us look at some of the places we should be providing under Dubs—I am talking about the 280 places that we have not yet filled.

[Adam Holloway]

Well, yes, I accept that, but we must be careful to do what is right for as many people as possible, rather than for the people who are most visible to us. We should not just do what makes us feel good. We must stop creating a “pull” for people to make these very long journeys.

[Bob Stewart]

My very good friend has lived under cover in Sangatte. Has he any comments on how the children were living there? In particular, can he tell us about the conditions that he saw when he was under cover?

[Adam Holloway]

I thank my hon. and gallant Friend for his intervention. The reality is that this was some time ago, and that there were very, very few children. What I found in my week-long stay at the Sangatte camp was that the refugees were mostly fit young men. I would do exactly as they did—they had sold bits of land in Kurdistan or wherever else and were coming to England. The reasons why that camp was full, why the Jungle camp was full and why there are thousands of people around Calais is that they know they will get into Britain. We have people drowning in the Mediterranean because we have created the pull factor: the expectation that if they make it to Europe, they will stay in Europe. Until we break that, we will continue to have this problem, and we will continue to have so many young people coming over here.

The reality with what we describe as these “refugee children”—I do acknowledge that we cannot have nine-year olds living in bushes—is that 90% of the unaccompanied asylum-seeking children who applied for asylum in 2016 were male, 59% of whom claimed to be either 16 or 17 years old.

[Stella Creasy]

The hon. Gentleman is talking about people who may have come here illegally. Does he agree that if we have a safe and legal process, all of the Daily Mail myths about who the refugee children are can be dealt with because Home Office officials will be processing them on the ground? That is what we are talking about today.

[Adam Holloway]

I have great sympathy with what the hon. Lady says, but I have also seen these kids in the camps. We should be doing everything we can for the many, not for the relative few. [Interruption.] It is true. We should not just do what makes us feel good. There are millions of refugees in the middle east who need as much help as we can give. We cannot settle them all in the UK; we must do what we can for the many.

By taking such young people, we are spending vast amounts of money that could much more effectively help children in their own regions. We are also creating pull factors, which encourage young people to embark on these long and sometimes lethal journeys. Here, council foster places are already oversubscribed. The amount of money spent on each child is enormous. I am saying not that we should not take in some cases, but that we should think about where we spend this money. We should use the money to look after people nearer their own homes. We must do what is right, and not what makes us feel good. If we are really to help all those who most need our help, we would do better to help them outside our borders, and to stop these immoral pull factors. We should be helping the many, not pulling in the few.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

Images of families and children in makeshift refugee camps around Calais have disappeared from the front pages and from our Facebook timelines, but the refugee crisis has not abated across Europe, and we continue to face the biggest humanitarian crisis since the 1940s.

Last week marked one year since the demolition of the Jungle camp. I went to visit it for myself in 2015, as others have done. The experience was both eye-opening and heart-breaking. Conditions were awful, but it was amazing to see the strength and grit of the people living there, despite the unimaginable situation in which they found themselves. They had built themselves a mosque and a church, and set up libraries, language schools and a barber’s shop. It was utterly striking that these people, who had been treated in the most uncivilised way, were now responding with dignity and civilisation.

From spending time with the families and the charity workers who were working tirelessly to provide support and advice to them, it was clear that they felt that the camp was their only option. I met lots of children who were there without adult guardians. For some, their parents had paid traffickers to get them to safety in Europe. Others had lost their parents to conflict or had become separated from them while fleeing.

I was particularly frustrated on behalf of those who were stuck there with family who were already in the United Kingdom. Under EU and UK law, they have a legal right to be here, but complicated bureaucracy and systemic failures mean that it can take up to six months even to register for reunification. The argument goes that they have reached European shores and they are safe, so why do they seem so intent on coming to Britain? Well, those who wish to come to the United Kingdom are a small minority of refugees who are currently in France, but nearly every one of them I spoke to on my visits had this grand view of Britain as a place of decency, safety, freedom and civilisation. If someone has made that kind of journey, crossed seas and taken those risks—let us be blunt—they are not one of life’s spongers. People who have met those refugees know that it is not the pull factor that has brought them here, but the push factor of war and persecution back at home.

[Adam Holloway]

This is absolutely preposterous. The fact is that these very long journeys, which sometimes last many months, cost a great deal of money and most are organised by people smugglers. These are the relatively privileged few; we should be concentrating on the many.

[Tim Farron]

We should concentrate on those who are most in need. I ask the hon. Gentleman to think again about the image of Britain in the mind of the people who seek to come here.

--- Later in debate ---

[David Linden]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. One of the great misfortunes of this debate is that the Government talk a lot about a pull factor but have published absolutely no evidence; it is a case of putting up or shutting up.

I want to touch on the British Government’s woefully inadequate response to what is the worst humanitarian crisis since world war two. To be clear, we on the nationalist Benches would like to see the Dubs scheme continued to enable the UK to receive at least 3,000 unaccompanied child refugees from Europe. Moreover, we want the British Government to increase the total number of refugees they intend to settle under the Syrian vulnerable person resettlement programme.

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of meeting Sarah Kirby, from the International Rescue Committee, who shared with me some very harrowing statistics and data about the number of unaccompanied and separated children in Europe. Europol reports that there are almost 90,000 lone refugee children in Europe. Indeed, the UNHCR estimates that in 2016 about 33,800 unaccompanied asylum-seeking children arrived in Greece, Italy, Bulgaria and Spain. The majority of those—some 26,000 children—arrived in Italy.

Earlier this year, it was announced that the UK Government had axed the Dubs amendment on refugee children and capped it at 480. The refugee crisis has not gone away and people are still fleeing the continuing violence in Syria and other countries, which creates a very serious risk that the numbers of unaccompanied children becoming prey to human traffickers will increase. Her Majesty’s Government need to do their part by continuing to provide places under the Dubs scheme when local authority capacity is available, as we know it is.

I commend many of the local authorities in Scotland that have embraced, with typically warm hospitality, many refugees from Syria. My own city of Glasgow has been outstanding when it comes to welcoming what are now affectionately known as “refuweegees”. In fact, Scotland has welcomed over a quarter of the total number of Syrian refugees in the UK.

I have some questions for the Minister. Will Her Majesty’s Government consider moving the date of entry to Europe to after 20 March 2016, if indeed there are still spaces available under the Dubs amendment? Given that there are currently 2,590 unaccompanied children in Greece and more than 13,000 in Italy, what assessment has been made of the UK’s ability to accept more than the already agreed 480 children? Sadly, it took a dead toddler to wash up on a beach and photos appearing on the front pages of our newspapers to make most of us sit up and take note of the stark horror of this humanitarian disaster.

[Adam Holloway]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[David Linden]

No, I think we have heard enough of the “little Britain” approach from the Government Benches today.

The photos have now disappeared from our newspapers and the story has largely faded, but the humanitarian crisis rages on. The Government can and must do more.

--- Later in debate ---

[Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West) (SNP)]

I congratulate the hon. Members for South Cambridgeshire (Heidi Allen) and for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) on securing this debate, which is about what we should do for unaccompanied child refugees on the European continent. In summing up for the third party, I had hoped to be able to say that there was a measure of cross-party agreement that more should be done. I probably can say that, although there have been one or two dissenting voices.

I will come on to deal with the argument about pull and push factors in a moment, but I want to say that the motion rightly notes that the United Kingdom has in the past

“demonstrated moral and political leadership”,

and it must do so again. Several speakers have mentioned the Kindertransport this afternoon. I was privileged and humbled recently to meet an old lady who came to the United Kingdom on the Kindertransport. The thing she was most keen to impress on me was not her experience, but the fact that we in the United Kingdom must now take similar steps to help modern child refugees in Europe. That was her message. It is right that there should be a degree of cross-party agreement, because this is a moral responsibility, not something that should break down on party political lines.

As I have said, I want to deal with the comments made by the hon. and gallant Member for Gravesham (Adam Holloway) about pull factors. I will do so by referring to the findings of a substantial report launched in the other place this summer, “An independent inquiry into the situation of separated and unaccompanied minors in parts of Europe”. It was originally the idea of the all-party group on human trafficking and modern slavery. When the general election was called, the all-party group was dissolved, but its members felt that the dangers of human trafficking facing children in Europe were so great that the report should nevertheless be done. It was done, and was published in July.

One of the reasons why the report was commissioned was to deal with something said by the Home Secretary in responding to an urgent question in the previous Parliament, back on 9 February, when she said that

“to continue to accept children under the Dubs amendment indefinitely…acts as a pull”

which “encourages the people traffickers.” She also said that

“if we continue to take numbers of children from European countries, particularly France, that will act as a magnet for the traffickers.”—[Official Report, 9 February 2017; Vol. 621, c. 639, 645.]

It was because of those statements that the right hon. Fiona Mactaggart and Baroness Butler-Sloss felt compelled to get this inquiry under way.

The evidence gathered during the inquiry and its findings demonstrated numerous push and pull factors, but it did not receive any evidence to support the Government’s position that the safe transfer of children to the UK is a pull factor encouraging traffickers. On the contrary, the inquiry found that the chaotic manner in which these arrangements were handled on the ground and then abruptly stopped, as well as the Government’s administration of the Dubs scheme, had created a lack of trust that was playing directly into the hands of the traffickers. Children were losing faith that the British Government would act in their best interests, and they were not prepared to wait for months for a decision that might never happen, so they turned instead to ever-riskier methods of getting to the UK.

What I am trying to say is that these children are in Europe. We might not like the fact that they are in Europe, but they are there. Many of them are unaccompanied, and it is our moral duty to help them. By failing to help them, we are actually pushing them into the hands of human traffickers. This debate seeks to get the Government to see their moral responsibility to continue with the efforts that they started last year, and to put them on a firmer footing to protect those children.

[Adam Holloway]

Is this not a no-brainer? The pull factor is the fact that people get to stay in Britain and Europe. If people did not get to stay in Britain or Europe, we would not have this complete mess and we would be able to look after people properly in their own regions.

[Joanna Cherry]

With respect, it is not a no-brainer, and I prefer to proceed on the basis of evidence, rather than on the hon. Gentleman’s say-so. I commend to him a report by the Human Trafficking Foundation. It took evidence, and found that the British Government’s failures were pushing children into the hands of traffickers. The contrary is therefore the case: if we provide safe routes to the United Kingdom, we take the children out of the hands of traffickers, and that is what we are debating this afternoon.

This is about reinstating the Dubs amendment, and the understanding that we all had—it is always the same Members who attend these debates—that the scheme would involve 3,000 people, not a measly few hundred. Let us be honest about that. I have also put my name to an amendment to the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill. I do not want the United Kingdom to leave the European Union, but if we are to do so, there is an opportunity for us to try to place our own rules on family reunion on a firmer basis, and to stretch that beyond just parents to reflect international standards. I would like us to remain part of international arrangements and to lead on them, and I hope we will do that.

It is important to remember that there are some good news stories in this, and perhaps the good news about children who managed to come here legally will inspire the Government to do more. I am grateful to Safe Passage for providing me with a briefing that tells a little bit about what happened to some of the children who were brought from the Calais camp last year. One year on, many of those children are living with family or foster carers, and older teenagers have been placed in supported accommodation. Most are now involved in college or attending school, and some are even preparing to go to university. These people will be useful members of our society, and will contribute to our society and economy.

One problem is that some children who came to join a family have since been taken into local authority care because their families were unable to support them. There is evidence that a small amount of financial support at crucial times can help those reunited families stay together in such situations. I applaud Glasgow City Council, which provides £57.90 per week to reunited families during the time that it takes to access welfare benefits. There are very low instances of family breakdown in Glasgow because of that, and it is an example of a small step that local authorities can take to assist in such situations.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow East (David Linden) said, SNP policy is clear: we want the Dubs scheme to continue to enable the UK to receive at least the 3,000 unaccompanied children that this House had in mind when the amendment was accepted. We also want the UK Government to increase the total number of refugees that they intend to take under the Syrian vulnerable persons resettlement scheme, by taking people from camps closer to their homes. We also want the UK Government to do their bit by providing better arrangements on the ground, so that there can be outreach to child refugees who arrive in Calais and Grande-Synthe, and proper outreach on the ground for children in Greece and Italy who have a right to come to the United Kingdom.

I am aware of the decision by the High Court this morning, and that it will be appealed, but I would like more good faith on the part of the Government in communicating with local authorities about whether they have the wherewithal to take those children. In Scotland, local authorities have made great efforts, together with partner organisations such as the Welcoming Association, which is based in my constituency. Local authorities across the United Kingdom have made efforts. Some have taken more than their fair share and have more of a burden than others, and we need to share the burden more fairly.

All of this takes a will and it takes central co-ordination. I encourage the Minister to give us something positive to go away with today. I encourage him to give us an indication of what he will do to break the stalemate we seem to have reached and to fulfil the spirit of what the House voted for over a year ago on the back of Lord Alfred Dubs’ hard work.

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[The Minister for Immigration (Brandon Lewis)]

I join others in congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire (Heidi Allen) and the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) on securing a debate on such an important subject, as well as all those who have made such thoughtful contributions. I agree that the tone has been hugely consensual on some core points, particularly the desire we all share to do the right thing by children who need our help the most. We will occasionally disagree on how to achieve that, but I think that core purpose is clear from the emotive, passionate and well informed speeches we have heard this afternoon. It is also important that we get things absolutely correct, and I will spend the next few minutes outlining some of the things that we are doing and that we can do, because some of the comments made this afternoon are simply not accurate.

We are a global leader in responding to the needs of those affected by conflict and persecution. Our country has a long and proud history of offering sanctuary to those most in need of protection. In response to the conflict in Syria, we have pledged over £2.46 billion in aid, and we will resettle 20,000 people in the UK by 2020 under the vulnerable persons resettlement scheme. More than 8,500 individuals are already here, about half of whom are children. We will also resettle 3,000 of the most vulnerable children and their family members from the middle east and north Africa by 2020 under the vulnerable children’s resettlement scheme. Eurostat figures show that in 2016 the UK settled more refugees from outside Europe than any other EU member state, and over a third of all resettlement to the EU was here in the UK. We as a country, across this House and across our local authorities and community and faith groups, should be proud of that.

Our efforts do not end there, however. To reduce suffering along the key migration routes, we have allocated more than £175 million in humanitarian assistance to address the Mediterranean migration crisis, among other direct on-the-ground work and support we are giving in the region and in those communities.

Given some of the comments made in the debate, I want to make it clear that there is no need for migrants to return to Calais and the surrounding areas in the hope of travelling illegally and dangerously to the UK to claim asylum here. France is a safe country and those in need of protection should claim asylum at the earliest opportunity. Claiming asylum in France is the fastest route to safety for those who need protection.

[Adam Holloway]

Once someone from, for instance, Syria finds safety in Turkey, Jordan or Lebanon, however—[Interruption.] Wait. However crowded or unpleasant that might be, when they then decide to move further into Europe, they are making a choice. I would make the same choice, but at that point they are a migrant exercising their free will, and they are therefore qualitatively different from the people who have just found safety.

[Brandon Lewis]

The heart of my hon. and gallant Friend’s point is that people should claim asylum in the first safe place they arrive at. That is the agreement and that is how the system works.

We also welcome the efforts of our French colleagues, who in recent weeks have, as Opposition Front Benchers have also recognised, established additional welcome centres to those already in place across the country. Four new centres have recently opened, away from the port area, where those wishing to claim asylum will be supported through the asylum process, and regular transportation is provided to these centres.

Bearing in mind questions raised earlier this afternoon, I want to make it clear that we work closely with France and other member states to deliver and transfer 480 unaccompanied children from Europe to the UK under section 67 of the Immigration Act 2016. That is the opposite of what some Members have said this afternoon about that process having stopped—it has not, it never has, it is still open.

A High Court ruling handed down today confirmed that the Government’s approach to implementing section 67 has been lawful. The Government’s focus is on working with local authorities and other partners to ensure we are transferring eligible children to the UK as quickly as possible, with their safety and best interests at the centre of all our decisions.

Migration into the EU

Adam Holloway Excerpts

Wednesday 10th February 2016 Westminster Hall

[Mr Adam Holloway (Gravesham) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered migration into the EU.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Rosindell. When I stood in this place last year and said that I thought that Germany was bonkers to give permanent residency to all the migrants arriving on the shores of Europe, that was met largely with derision. I stressed the importance of refraining from doing what made us collectively feel better at a time of appalling images of young children drowning on north African beaches and instead supporting pragmatic and moral solutions that represented the views of the British public, but also effectively served the needs of genuine refugees. I stressed that the message that Europe needed to give should be much clearer that those making the journey will not automatically get the right to stay in Europe if they arrive in Europe, and that if we did not break that link, we would have potentially hundreds of millions of people on the move. Within 3,000 km of the Mediterranean, which is four or five days’ drive away, nearly 1 billion people live. If I came from a poorer or less stable country, I might well make what would be a rational decision for my family and myself to move to a more peaceable area such as Europe to settle. However, we have not managed to break that link—that message has not gone out there in the world—and the drowning and the chaos continue. I believe that collectively we in Europe play a part in that, because we have not yet made it clear that if people arrive in Europe, they will not end up staying in Europe. The only people who have really profited from that chaos are the people smugglers.

Since that debate, we have seen the near-collapse of the Schengen agreement as countries opt for razor wire —some of them—over the open borders of the European Union. Sweden is the first casualty as a country that has failed both those whom it was trying to help and its population. With a proud history of taking in refugees from across the globe during the past century, its Government tried to do the right thing, in their view, by taking 200,000 refugees last year, but they have now had to admit that they do not have the financial means to assimilate such numbers and more importantly they have lost the backing of their population. Indeed, this is the great tragedy that seems to be playing out right across Europe. Governments such as those of Germany and Sweden have created a great backlash against even the most deserving people who require support, as a result of what in my view has been incredibly misguided altruism.

Following the debate last September, some newspapers mocked me for a “bizarre rant” in relation to a comment that I had made about a haircut. That only went to strengthen my point that any talk of what we actually do in response to the migrant crisis is almost politically toxic. Only recently, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister was accused of using offensive language when making reference to a swarm of migrants in Calais. In my view, the Prime Minister—I am not known for toadying to him—actually has been ahead of the game on this and has realised that, if there is fallout from countries such as Syria, we get the most bang for our buck in terms of aid if we look after people in the region. The Prime Minister has also been very clear, which many of us have not been, that there is a very clear difference between a refugee and an economic migrant. It is fair to say that he understands the difference between a refugee and an economic migrant.

[Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making a very powerful speech. We must talk about these issues. He will be aware that in The Times and YouGov poll in January 2016—it was very recent—six out of 10 people put immigration and asylum as one of the top three troubling factors facing the country today, so if we do not talk about that as politicians in this place, we are letting our country down.

[Mr Holloway]

Absolutely. I read an excellent piece in The Guardian, I think, by Nick Cohen, who said that if we really want to help people who find themselves in difficulties, we have to understand that there is a difference between economic migrants and asylum seekers. Indeed, the vast majority of people who come to live in this country are the former. A friend told me earlier that 90% are economic migrants and 8% are asylum seekers.

To go back to the haircut point, the fact remains that people who have successfully claimed asylum in the UK do indeed go back to places that they claimed asylum from. I would like to thank those members of the public who, after the September debate, sent me emails with many examples that they had known in their own lives. I sense that much of the media and much of the political class are rather out of sync with what the British public think about this issue.

Years ago, I lived covertly in the Sangatte Red Cross camp in Calais. I remember arguing with one of the producers when I was editing the piece, because my experience in the Sangatte camp was that most of the people—99%—were fit young men who had paid people smugglers to make that very long journey and were indeed economic migrants, not desperate refugees. I remember having an argument, when we were going to voice the documentary, about the use of the word “refugee” or “economic migrant”.

During the September debate, one hon. Member accused me of being out of step with what the British public feel about accepting large numbers of refugees, but that does not stack up. Following the Prime Minister’s announcement that the UK would resettle 20,000 Syrians, a YouGov poll found that 49% of those asked believed that Britain should be accepting fewer or no refugees, which was a 22 percentage point increase from the month before—my hon. Friend the Member for St Albans (Mrs Main) pointed that out. I was also derided for “blurring” the boundaries between what a refugee is and what a migrant is, but I think that that point is finally beginning to be taken on board, even by Mr Juncker in the European Commission. I argue that not recognising the difference between migrants and refugees has done more damage to the case of genuine refugees, in terms of public opinion, than any ghastly things that have happened in Paris or may have happened in Cologne. Of course, there is an appetite among Europeans to help people, but there is a limit, and that limit comes in earlier when we fail to recognise that distinction. That really helps no one.

Do not get me wrong. As I have said already, economic migrants make rational choices for themselves and their families, and all of us would do the same, but either we are a nation state or we are not and either we decide who comes into our country or we do not, and at the moment it strikes me that we are not doing that in Europe and we are not doing it in the UK, either.

[Jonathan Lord (Woking) (Con)]

I agree with the thrust of what my hon. Friend is saying. Does that not underline how important it is that Britain remains out of the Schengen area?

[Mr Holloway]

Absolutely. That was a great bit of foresight, so I completely agree with my hon. Friend.

Some years ago, as a television reporter, I experienced the plight of refugees—as opposed to the economic migrants whom I met in the Sangatte camp—when I was covering the wars in the former Yugoslavia and I lived undercover as a deaf and dumb Bosnian Muslim in Serb territory. I joined Bosnian Muslims and Croats being ethnically cleansed by Serb forces, and we ended up in a refugee camp in, I think, Slovenia—actually, I ended up in prison in Austria, but that is another story. Those people really were refugees. They travelled en masse as families with their possessions over the border into a neighbouring safe country—very different from many young men who travel to a country of their personal choice.

It is hard to swallow the UN figure that 62% of migrants who arrive into Europe must be genuine refugees purely because they come from Eritrea, Afghanistan and Syria. Frustratingly, these people continue to be muddled with genuine refugees, and there needs to be a clear distinction. Since September, the enormous number of migrants has continued with some 55,000 making the crossing last month alone, 244 of whom, I regret to say, drowned or are missing. The breakdown of Schengen and the rise of nationalism have been two predictable results of the mismanagement of the crisis by the European Commission. The only encouraging sign is that the Commission has finally admitted that there needs to be some distinction between the treatment of economic migrants and the treatment of refugees.

Last week, it was announced that 40% of migrants, most of whom are Syrian, require international protection. That is a stupendous revelation following much fudging of the figures but it comes too late to stem the millions who are currently en route for Europe. However, despite that realisation, there is still a bit of a gulf between the beliefs of Eurocrats and those of the ordinary man or woman in European cities, including those in Britain. Juncker and many of the political classes are still pushing the view that the Cologne attacks were a public order problem and nothing to do with migrants from different cultures.

The EU has become emblematic of slow growth and rising unemployment. Unemployment across the continent is currently at almost 10% and youth unemployment is almost double that at 20%. Greece and Spain are suffering from youth unemployment rates of nearly 50% and I believe that Italy’s youth unemployment rate is almost 40%. Unemployment is destroying the prospects of a whole generation of young Europeans and the impact of new arrivals can only have a detrimental effect.

The British Government suggested that immigration should be brought down to tens of thousands—incidentally, a YouGov poll found that 78% of the population thought that that was a good idea—but despite the best efforts of my right hon. Friend the Immigration Minister, it simply has not happened. It is estimated that more than 1 million migrants will end up in Europe this year, and immigration figures for the year ending June 2015 show total net migration of 336,000 into the UK, of whom nearly 200,000 are non-EU migrants. Under the high net migration assumption of 265,000, the population will grow by 12.2 million over the next 25 years.

The European Commission has proved to be inept at dealing with the crisis and continues implicitly to encourage more people to make the dangerous maritime crossing instead of staying in safe countries. The epic mismanagement of the crisis has been politically destabilising for all concerned. The British Government need to push for what I think the previous Government referred to as extraterritorial processing centres—reception centres in safe countries such as Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan, which surround the conflict zones. At the same time, we must stop the boats that are endangering lives and reducing the security along European borders.

European countries should indeed do more—as the Prime Minister has been trying to do—to support countries such as Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan, which are hosting huge numbers of refugees in proportion to their resident populations. Britain is already the second-biggest bilateral donor supporting Syrian refugees but, of course, more can be done. I read in The Economist that the amount of money spent by the international community on looking after refugees in the region is the same as the amount that German citizens spent on chocolate last year, so there is quite a lot more we can do.

Many Syrian families arriving in places such as Germany are professional, educated people—precisely the sort of people Syria will need in the post-conflict environment. Having hundreds of thousands of its most skilled and educated people relocated in Europe will not be very helpful when things improve. Recent refugees from Syria are more skilled than other groups and those who came, for example, during the Yugoslav wars in the 1990s. Those skilled, middle-class workers will urgently be required when rebuilding Syria, and they will not be a lot of use if they are living in Germany.

The decent and humane response is in a systematic manner to process and differentiate genuine refugees from economic migrants, to repatriate those who fail the asylum process and, overall, to try to keep people in their home regions. It is immoral to send out messages to people that if they arrive in Europe, they can stay in Europe. We have to accept some culpability for the deaths of men, women and children in the Mediterranean. As I said in a previous debate, the moral conclusion is that, frankly, we should build a great big bridge from Africa because at the moment we are encouraging people to drown at the hands of smugglers.

The Prime Minister’s recent attempts at renegotiation have shown that the EU is pretty unwilling to change. We go cap in hand and get almost nothing. The British Government currently have a raft of legal constraints. Any one of the people arriving in Europe in a year or two would be able to come to live in the UK. It is self-evident that, as a nation state, we no longer have any meaningful control of our borders. While Britain remains in Europe, it will be impossible to control our borders—a point that was described by William Hague in 2008.

Europe lacks a collective voice and has had no greater tragedy than in Syria, where the EU has been pretty ineffective over the past few years. A failure to offer real solutions in regional geopolitics and to understand that conflicts sometimes only finish when agreements are made with some pretty unpleasant people has not helped the untold suffering for millions of people in Syria and on its borders. The resulting exodus to Europe and the ensuing mismanagement by the EU has highlighted that the whole European project is destined to fail.

With each of the 28 member states having its own economic limitations, historical memory and political culture, it is impossible to reach an agreement on almost anything bar trade and logistics. The varying attitudes and experiences that each country brings have shown that they cannot be homogenised because there is no political will in each country for the EU’s ultimate political goal, and there lies the problem. The migrant crisis has exposed the unsustainability of the undemocratic and bureaucratic EU.

The suppression of the fervent nationalism that contributed to the second world war was the noble aim of the EU’s founding fathers. Through the EU’s failure to create a robust and systematic way of coping with the migrant influx in a fair way whereby genuine refugees are differentiated from economic migrants, it has destroyed its founding principle. Through epic mismanagement and failure to agree on anything between the 28 member states, Schengen is in ruins as countries rapidly get on with their own solutions. With hundreds of millions of people in the borderlands of Europe suffering oppression or wanting a better life for their families, this tide of migrants will continue until drastic action is taken. For a country such as Britain, that can only happen outside the EU.

The migrant crisis, like nothing else, has tragically exposed the limitations of the European project. Undemocratically elected politicians in Brussels talking of the redistribution of hundreds of thousands of migrants across willing Governments only strengthens the vast gulf between the political classes and the people they are elected to serve. That has had disastrous results for countries such as Sweden. Either we are a nation state, or we are not. Either we are serious about helping the many millions of people affected by war and oppression, or we are not. We—not the German Government, the people smugglers or the EU—need to decide who comes into this country. Britain needs to take firm action, but that can only take place out of the European Union.

[Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairpersonship, Mr Rosindell.

Contrary to what the hon. Member for Gravesham (Mr Holloway) has just said, we are facing a refugee crisis in Europe, not a crisis involving economic migrants. I will particularly address the plight of women and child refugees. The First Minister of Scotland has said that we should be in no doubt that what we are witnessing is a humanitarian crisis on a scale not seen in Europe since the second world war. Most of the people travelling through Turkey, Greece and the Balkans to try to get to western Europe are doing so because they are desperate. The images of their suffering will continue to haunt our consciences and the reputation of this union of nations for many generations to come if we do not do more collectively to help them.

The hon. Gentleman spoke about public opinion. In so far as I can judge public opinion in my constituency of Edinburgh South West, the vast majority of emails that I have received—many hundreds have come in batches and waves since September—have been asking this Parliament to encourage the Government to do more for the refugees in Europe, as opposed to doing nothing or less.

I recognise that the UK Government are making a substantial contribution to humanitarian initiatives on the ground in some of the countries that refugees are coming from, and I recognise the significant financial contributions that have been made to aid. I also recognise the United Kingdom’s commitment to take 20,000 vulnerable refugees over the next five years, but I regret to say that I do not believe those initiatives are enough. We, as a union of nations, are required to do more, and we are required to encourage the European Union to have a better co-ordinated response. We also need greater international effort through the United Nations.

I often hear what the hon. Gentleman said about the moral argument—that if we encourage people to come, we are simply throwing them into the arms of people smugglers and encouraging them to take their life in their hands. If one looks at the situation in the round, these refugees have not been met with a particularly welcoming attitude in Europe—certainly our union of nations has not been welcoming to them—yet they are continuing to come, so I feel that that moral argument falls down somewhat.

The majority of these people are refugees, not economic migrants. They are, of course, seeking a better life, but their main reason for doing that and leaving their countries is that those countries have been destroyed or deeply compromised by conflict. It is particularly inappropriate for the United Kingdom to wash its hands of taking any of the people who are now in Europe given that we have joined in with those conflicts. Whatever the rights and wrongs of that, and there were respectable arguments on both sides, as a Parliament we took the view that we would join those conflicts and interfere in other countries’ civil wars by dropping bombs, which is all the more reason for not washing our hands of responsibility for some of the refugees who are coming to Europe.

I strongly believe that the United Kingdom should take a fair and proportionate share of the refugees who are now in Europe. How we go about doing that, and how we address the situation, is complex, but it is fundamentally morally wrong—I use the word “morally” advisedly on Ash Wednesday—for us to say that we will do nothing for these people who are so desperate. I recognise that we are helping them in their own countries and on the ground, but people are coming to Europe in droves. We see their suffering on the news every night, and it is wrong for a relatively wealthy union of nations such as ours to do nothing about it.

[Mr Holloway]

I see where the hon. and learned Lady is coming from, and I appreciate the great good will that she shows to all these people, but in law they are not refugees. Someone is a refugee until they find refuge in a safe country, and at that point, although apparently they can later be designated as a refugee, they are an economic migrant.

My other point is that just because someone comes from, say, Afghanistan, it does not necessarily mean that they are fleeing violence. I met a guy from Afghanistan the other day in the “jungle” camp in Calais who comes from a part of the country where there is no fighting. We need to wise up.

[Joanna Cherry]

As the hon. Gentleman probably knows, I am a lawyer, but in this situation the niceties of whether these people are refugees in law matters not. We did not bother ourselves unduly in the United Kingdom about the legal position of the Jewish children when we took them in on the Kindertransport, or about the legal position of the Ugandan refugees. Even the former Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, was persuaded to take some of the Vietnamese boat people. So this is not a debate about legalities; it is a debate about the correct humanitarian response, the responsibility of the world’s relatively wealthy nations to take responsibility for people who are suffering greatly and our particular responsibility to do that when we have chosen to become involved in the conflicts that are creating refugees. I hasten to add that I make no comment about the rights or wrongs of that, but we are involved now, so we have to recognise the implications of our involvement.

[Mr Holloway]

I am sure that the hon. and learned Lady’s constituents would like to know what percentage of the populations of Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya she thinks should come to live in this country if they want to do so.

[Joanna Cherry]

The position of the Scottish Government has been clear. We will take a fair share of a proportionate number coming to the United Kingdom. Indeed, some Syrian asylum seekers and vulnerable refugees have already been resettled in my constituency of Edinburgh South West.

[Mr Holloway]

How many?

[Joanna Cherry]

I am not at liberty to reveal the precise figure. It is not a large number, because the United Kingdom Government do not permit us to take a large number, and it is a reserved matter, so our hands are tied. Our First Minister has made it clear that we are willing to take a fair and proportionate share. How that is done has to be decided at a higher level even than the UK, which is why European Union co-operation is so important.

I want to say something about the plight of women and child refugees, because earlier this month, about a week or so ago, UNICEF reported that for the first time since the refugee and migrant crisis in Europe started, there are more women and children on the move than adult males, and that children and women now make up nearly 60% of the refugees and migrants crossing the border from Greece to the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. Children now account for 36%—that is more than a third—of those risking the treacherous sea crossing between Turkey and Greece. The figure of 330 having drowned in the past five months has often been mentioned on the Floor of the House. UNICEF has emphasised that children should be prioritised at every stop of the way. Particularly when they get to Europe, they need to be informed of their right to claim asylum and their right to family reunification.

It is important not to forget the terrible conditions from which many women and children are fleeing. It has been well documented that women in Iraq and Syria are the targets of brutal oppression and sexual attacks perpetrated by Daesh. Rape is considered useful by Daesh as it traumatises individuals and undermines their sense of autonomy, control and safety. Rape is always an issue in war, but it is a particular issue in these wars. The former UN assistant commissioner for the protection of refugees said last year that

“Syria is increasingly marked by rape and sexual violence employed as a weapon of war…destroying identity, dignity and the social fabrics of families and communities”.

Female and child survivors of such sexual crimes are often shunned by their own communities, which is all the more reason why they come to Europe seeking refuge. When those people come, it is essential that they are treated with dignity and respect and that their particular vulnerabilities are recognised.

Save the Children has called on the UK to take 3,000 of the unaccompanied child refugees in Europe, and there is a moral imperative for us to consider that carefully—I am aware that the Government are considering it at present. I appeal for recognition of the reality of the desperateness of the situation and of the vulnerability of so many of these refugees, particularly female and child refugees. There should be recognition of the reality of sexual violence perpetrated as a weapon of war, which many women and children are fleeing, and of our moral obligation as a wealthy first-world nation to take our fair share of the burden.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Holloway]

In summary, we have got to do what is right, what works, what is sustainable and what is moral, not just what makes us feel better about things. A good example of what I am talking about could be the case mentioned by the hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer), of someone from Kurdistan in Dunkirk whose town had been taken by ISIS. The rest of Kurdistan is relatively peaceful and, after 18 months, the peshmerga had taken back places such as Sinjar, so there is no reason for someone to move from Kurdistan to Calais to seek safety. There is plenty of safety in other bits of Kurdistan and within the region. The driver in that case is, I think, economic; it is not about security.

When we think about the refugees, we should be helping the many, not the relatively privileged few who have the money to make long journeys. We should be helping people in the region, and helping them properly, as the Prime Minister and the Minister for Immigration have done. We have to send out a firm message to the hundreds of millions of people within only a few days’ drive of the Mediterranean: if they come to Europe, they will not stay in Europe. Until we do so, the crisis will go on and on.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered migration into the EU.

Donald Trump

Adam Holloway Excerpts

Monday 18th January 2016 Westminster Hall

[Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)]

The arguments over why we are having this debate have already been articulated by the speakers who came before me—my hon. Friend the Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn) and the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully). I want to discuss why this online petition, which has been signed by 3,000 of my constituents in Hampstead and Kilburn, has evoked such emotion. Is it because Donald Trump’s comments have tarnished the entire Muslim community with the views of a small group of extremists whose views ordinary Muslims absolutely condemn? Is it because the world’s largest economy might be excluding the world’s second largest religious community—more than 1.6 billion people? Or is it because people in this country are proud of the long history we have of welcoming immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers?

People often say that the public are apathetic about politics. This petition, signed by nearly 600,000 people, shows that when people feel a sense of justice—when they feel that we need to stop a poisonous, corrosive man from entering our country—they will act in good conscience. We are not talking about just any man. This is a man with an extremely high profile who has been involved in the American show-business industry for years—a man who is now interviewing for the most important job in the world. His words are not comical. His words are not funny. His words are poisonous and risk inflaming tensions between vulnerable communities. Let me make one thing clear: we have legislation in our country to ensure that we do not let people who are not conducive to the public good enter. My hon. Friend outlined some of the people the Home Office has banned from entering this country.

[Mr Adam Holloway (Gravesham) (Con)]

You are talking about a candidate for the presidency of the United States. It is up to the American people to decide whether his views are objectionable, not you guys.

[Sir Roger Gale (in the Chair)]

Order. The hon. Gentleman has been in the House long enough to know that he has to address the Chamber through the Chair. I have no view on this matter whatever, as he will appreciate.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

I do not accept the hon. Gentleman’s analysis, but yes, there do need to be some restrictions on free speech. If people are inciting violence or terrorism, that freedom of speech should be restricted and is unacceptable, but we certainly should not go around banning everyone from the country simply for voicing an opinion that the hon. Gentleman happens to disagree with.

[Mr Holloway]

I am sure that my hon. Friend would agree that this motion is actually embarrassing to the UK and makes us look intolerant and totalitarian. I feel that we should almost apologise to the people of the United States. It is for them to decide on Mr Trump’s views, not us, and I think we should also remind those in America that these people over here on the Opposition Benches represent less than 1% of the population of this country.

[Philip Davies]

I share the sentiment behind my hon. Friend’s contribution. I think it is ridiculous, frankly, that we need to have such a debate in a country that has always prided itself on freedom and free speech.

Refugee Crisis in Europe

Adam Holloway Excerpts

Tuesday 8th September 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Adam Holloway (Gravesham) (Con)]

People across Britain, including one of my constituents who was on the phone, wept when they saw that little boy’s body on the beach. Good people, such as the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), scream out in empathy that we should be doing something to help these people and assimilating more refugees to help the desperate. I completely agree on the need for action and the need to help those whose lives have been crushed by war and to do, with an enormous international effort, much more than we are doing now—as she said, a kind of Marshall plan.

However, I also think that the Prime Minister is completely right when he says that receiving ever more people simply is not the answer. In fact, I believe that much of the EU, and the Germans, are completely bonkers if they give ever growing numbers of refugees and migrants, picked up in the Mediterranean or elsewhere in Europe, the right to settle in Europe. There are hundreds of millions of people in the borderlands of Europe who are poor or affected by war, wanting better lives for their families, so we have to make it absolutely clear that people will not be allowed to live in Europe if they try to get in through the back door.

[Neil Gray (Airdrie and Shotts) (SNP)]

rose—

[Mr Holloway]

Give me a couple of minutes. Just let me get into my stride.

Instead, those who are refugees should be offered a well-resourced place of safety—perhaps in Europe, but more probably in a safe place in the region where they live—and if it turns out that someone is an economic migrant, they should be taken home. This is not xenophobic: it is moral, practical, fair and sustainable over many years. As I see it, it is the only way to slow the number of bodies landing on the beaches and to allow Europe to re-establish control of its borders, which it has now lost. If we fail to achieve this, millions more people will make these journeys and we will be overwhelmed in the years ahead and less able to send resources to the region.

There are big disparities in security and economic opportunities between nations, and they will not be solved by short-term measures, such as giving hundreds of thousands of people asylum within Europe. It is not an idle exaggeration or scaremongering to say that over the coming years we are looking at potentially hundreds of millions of people seeking a better life in Europe. The numbers have grown and will grow as long as we continue to reward these journeys with the opportunity to settle in Europe.

Let us be hard-headed about this: not all migrants are refugees. By way of illustration, Al Jazeera reporting from the Greek side of the border with Macedonia showed that large numbers of Syrians were trying to dissociate themselves from people from other places. It said:

“They want to separate themselves from the other nationalities; the Pakistanis, the Afghans, the Iraqis...what they say is that all these other nationalities claim to be Syrians as well, because it is the Syrians who have the most valid claim to asylum.”

When populations flee war or famine, they generally flee together, as I saw as a television reporter and a soldier. They flee with the elderly, the infants and the women as well as the men. [Interruption.] Yes, I would. The current migrants are overwhelmingly working-age males who have paid a hefty price to make the trip. Most of the countries they came from are certainly poor, but they are not at war. It costs thousands to board a smuggler’s boat and a lot of money in the months before to travel to it.

As a TV reporter in the 1990s, I remember doing a piece about landlords in north London ripping off the housing benefit system. I was living in a house with a lot of people, including many from Congo, many of whom had been soldiers. I remember lying on my bed in this room that I was sharing with half a dozen of these guys, and I thought to myself, “Who is more likely to get to England and to north London: is it the soldier who had an AK47 and a fistful of dollars or the widow with seven children and not a cent to her name?”

Some years ago, I lived under cover for a couple of weeks in the Sangatte camp in Calais when I was working for ITV. I think there are some parallels with the situation today. Living side by side with people in the camp, it seemed to me that the overwhelming majority of the people who got as far as Calais were economic migrants. Every night, hundreds of us, all young men, would burst out of the camp as it started to get dark. We would spend the night cutting the wire, trying to get on to freight trains; we would be picked up the next morning by the French police and what we called the police taxi service to take us back to the camp.

If I had been one of those guys—then from Iran, Kosovo, the Kurdish areas of Iraq and Turkey—I would have done exactly the same as they did. How can we possibly criticise people for wanting a better life? Most were doing just that—looking for a better life. In many cases, their families had sold land to get the money to pay the people smugglers, and they had travelled to northern France unchecked. This still seems to be the case in Calais today. Not long ago, many people got out of an unsafe country to get there and they travelled through many safe countries subsequently. What they are doing now is trying to get into their country of choice.

[Stuart C. McDonald]

Is the hon. Gentleman aware of the information sent by the Immigration Minister to the Home Affairs Select Committee, confirming that the most common nationalities among those at Calais included Syrians, Eritreans and Afghans? Refugees can be wealthy as well. The fact is that the United Nations has been absolutely clear that this is a refugee crisis and it is very likely the majority of people at Calais are refugees. Why does the hon. Gentleman persist in peddling myths?

[Mr Holloway]

The hon. Gentleman did not listen to what I said. I said that those people had been through dozens of safe countries by the time they get to Calais. It is quite possible to be a refugee and an economic migrant. [Interruption.] One of the appalling truths about the Syrian bodies washed up on the beaches is that they previously got to safe countries and are now choosing to come to Europe. Again, I would do the same. Likewise, people in this country have claimed asylum in this country and then they go back on holiday to the places from where they have claimed that asylum. I could not get my hair cut the other day for that reason.

Australia used to have a severe—[Interruption.] Labour Members should rise to intervene if they want to say something.

[Stephen Doughty]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way? [Interruption.]

[Stephen Doughty]

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I am sorry, but the hon. Gentleman is being very unhelpful by doing what many other Conservative Members are doing in constantly blurring the lines of definition between refugee, migrant, economic migrant and asylum seeker. The reality is that he is out of step with what the British public feel about this. People of all parties in my constituency are making it clear what they feel about the issue. This is a different situation, and the constant blurring of those definitions does not help.

[Mr Holloway]

We will not get anywhere unless we are clear that there is a difference between a refugee and an economic migrant. [Interruption.] I said it was possible to be both. Australia used to have a big migrant crisis, but does not have one now. Why? Because the Government took bold action. As Tony Abbott said—[Interruption.] Opposition Members should not laugh; this is true. Tony Abbott said:

“If we do the slightest thing to encourage people to get on the boats, this problem will get worse, not better.”

We cannot have a rational discussion of this issue, unless we accept that not all migrants are refugees. Economic migrants should apply properly, like everyone else, before leaving home. It should not be the case that people have only to arrive in Europe to be allowed to stay in Europe.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

I thank my very hon. Friend for giving way. Both he and I know that the real sadness is that some people in Syria will be petrified and unable to move because they do not have a penny. These people are refugees without being able to be refugees because they are stuck in Syria, petrified, slowly watching their families being killed.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Holloway]

Absolutely, and I think we have a deep moral obligation to people who find themselves caught up in the wreckage of warring nations, or who find themselves persecuted.

During the Balkan wars, I posed as a deaf and dumb Bosnian Muslim in Serb territory—from the Kosara valley, Banja Luka and over the bridge at Bosanska Gradiška. We travelled down in a great big convoy of escaping Bosnian Muslims and Croats on trains. I ended up living in a mosque with refugees and then in a refugee camp in northern Croatia, followed by a prison cell in Austria, having been arrested with the Macedonian people smugglers who were taking us into Europe. Most of the people with whom I travelled from Serb territory remained in local refugee camps until the war ended. The vast majority now remain in former Yugoslavia, if not in their old homes.

These terrified people were most certainly refugees, and I will never forget the behaviour of the soldiers, and border guards and police towards these families, including an incident in which a child was literally picked up by the hair and thrown out of a bus on to a concrete hard shoulder. With 4 million Syrians displaced outside their country, and many more within it, what will be the effect of an open door from the European Union? Can anyone tell me what number of people would understandably move west? Can anyone tell me at what point our nations would turn round and say, “Hang on, we cannot keep on taking people from poorer countries into our communities”?

[Geraint Davies]

The hon. Gentleman said that Germany was “bonkers”. Is he aware that after the second world war, Germany absorbed an extra 12 million people, mainly Germans fleeing from Czechoslovakia and elsewhere. It has an open door for another 800,000 next year—it was 300,000 last year— and it has an ageing population so it could do with the workers. It is not “bonkers”. It has an open heart and an open mind—neither of which the hon. Gentleman has.

[Mr Holloway]

Well, I think it is completely bonkers. In my view, it is also immoral because we will see more and more bodies washed up. We are just going to have to disagree on this.

I think we could help a lot more people if the international community behaved a bit more like my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, by trying to support as many Syrian refugees as possible through helping the many, as opposed to the few—helping all those camped out across Lebanon, Turkey, Jordan and elsewhere. That would be better than focusing on a lucky minority who will get to Europe.

Back in May, the European Commission made the insane proposal that member countries should take in migrants and refugees under a quota scheme. Notwithstanding other comments that he has made, Viktor Orbán, the Prime Minister of Hungary, noted at the time:

“The proposal on the table from the European Commission…is absurd, bordering on insanity… It is an incentive for human traffickers and will simply tell people: yes, try to cross the Mediterranean at all costs.”

Our Government rightly ruled out the EU asylum policy as an open invitation to uncontrolled immigration. The Australian general Jim Molan put it like this:

“Europe needs to make a very big decision and to make it soon. If it does not want to control its borders then it should establish a sea bridge across the Mediterranean, let everyone in who wants to come, and not let these people die.”

Let us not forget that there are some very wealthy Sunni states with dogs in the Syrian fight. Refugees should be looked after in the first available country that they come to, or in their regions. There are plenty of very wealthy countries with land that is closer to those regions.

[Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)]

The hon. Gentleman has referred approvingly to Australia’s treatment of migrants and refugees. I wonder whether he is aware of an editorial published a few days ago by The New York Times, which described Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s methods and policies as

“inhumane, of dubious legality and strikingly at odds with the country's tradition of welcoming people fleeing persecution and war.”

[Mr Holloway]

I myself wonder how many people have not drowned because of those policies, but, again, we shall have to differ.

We must return those who are not entitled to claim asylum to their countries of origin, and—as we heard from the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford—try to find mechanisms to help the very, very large numbers of refugees in the region. We must consider establishing migration centres in safe places outside the EU, or possibly within it, for those who are rescued or those who have arrived. I believe that, in the jargon, that is called “extraterritorial processing”. In 2003, the Labour Government presented their idea for “transit processing centres”. Those proposing such an offshore asylum strategy could also learn from what the Australians have done in Papua New Guinea.

There are millions of genuine refugees from Syria alone, plus millions of economic migrants from numerous countries, whom we must discourage, and those are not numbers that it will to be possible to accommodate through dispersal within Europe. Besides, Syria needs a regional solution; relocating people away from the region does not offer the long-term approach that it requires.

At some stage, we shall have to realise that big boys’ toys—that drones, lean men with unseasonal suntans and Viking moustaches, and fast jets—do not end wars. What ends wars, ultimately, is working on the politics, and sometimes that means going into partnership with some pretty unpleasant people. However, that is for another debate.

Let me say this in conclusion—Members will be relieved to hear that. If we do not act to break the link between a journey and a right to remain, millions of migrants may arrive on European soil over the next couple of years alone. Today, if we keep sending people in poorer or less stable countries the message that once they are picked up by the Royal Navy, or walk into Hungary, or reach a Greek island, they will have a ticket to a whole new life in Europe there and then, ever-growing numbers will come. Wouldn't you?

[Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

The hon. Gentleman’s argument seems to be predicated on the idea that the fact that Australia has said no to boatloads of people has had the effect of stopping people going. Is he aware of the number of people who are continuing to drown while trying to get to Australia? Is there not just a vague possibility that the boats are not a pull factor, and that it is the need to flee for their lives that is making people take this risk? Operation Mare Nostrum was stopped in the Mediterranean because there was an idea that doing so would somehow stop people coming, but that simply was not true. People are dying and fighting for their lives; surely they deserve our protection.

[Mr Holloway]

They absolutely deserve our protection, and that is where I am coming from in this debate. We have to be hard-nosed and realistic. It is all very well to try to make oneself feel better, but we must do what is sustainable, moral and right in the long term.

Unless the message gets through to people in these countries, we are inviting hundreds of millions to seek a better life in Europe and Britain. Either we are a nation state or we are not. Either we are able to be serious about helping the many millions who are affected, or we are not. We should decide who comes into our country, not the German Government, and not the people smugglers. The message needs to be much clearer, or the drownings and the chaos will go on.

I completely understand the sentiments of those, here and in my constituency, who are demanding that something be done. We must do the right thing for the long term, in order to prevent the tides of death many of which we will never see in a newspaper. We need to resist the temptation to do what makes us feel better, and start coming up with some proper ideas that could solve the problem.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stella Creasy]

The hon. Gentleman raises the point about the well-founded fear, but my point is that every generation faces the test that the 1951 convention sets us. When a person comes to us and says, “I am in danger, will you help me?”, how we answer defines us as much as it defines their future. As the hon. Member for Gravesham said, it is a moral question. When we signed the convention in 1951, nobody could have predicted the situation that we are in now, but the fact that we could not predict it does not absolve us of the responsibility to answer the question. We are not absolved when the people fleeing the murderous intent of ISIL ask, “Will you help?” Our answer should be yes. When people are fleeing sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo, will you help? Yes. When people are fleeing the repressive regime of Robert Mugabe, will you help? Yes. When people are fleeing civil war in Sudan and Eritrea, will you help? Yes. How we answer says as much about us as it does about them, so when we quibble about numbers and qualify them by saying that we will take 20,000 but over a number of years, or perhaps that we will take not 20,000 but up to 20,000—

[Mr Holloway]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Stella Creasy]

I will give way very quickly, and only once.

[Mr Holloway]

So rather than quibbling, will the hon. Lady tell me how many people we should be taking in her constituency and for how long?

[Stella Creasy]

I shall come on to talk about Walthamstow and am happy to invite the hon. Gentleman, who need not come under cover, to see the welcome that we give to people in Walthamstow. It is not easy, but we do it because it says something about us as a country and a community that when people are at risk we answer the call. When the people of Germany have answered the call to the tune of 800,000, when the people of Sweden have answered the call by taking eight per 1,000 of population, that challenges us all in the UK.

Let us look at the camps, because the Government are specifying that we should take people from the camps alone. When we consider the figure of 800,000 taken by Germany, it is sobering to realise that Lebanon has taken more than 1.1 million people in a country of 4.5 million.

Intelligence and Security Services

Adam Holloway Excerpts

Thursday 31st October 2013 Westminster Hall

[Mr David Winnick (Walsall North) (Lab)]

I suspect that there will be a sharp divide in the Chamber, not necessarily on party lines, as in previous debates on intelligence and security over many years, even before the agencies were put on a statutory basis. Like everyone else, I do not for one moment doubt the need for the security and intelligence agencies to work as required. That would be so even were we not faced by the threat of acute terrorism. Let no one be in doubt that I entirely accept the necessity for such activities, as other Members have said.

There have, however, been scandals in the past. During my own parliamentary career, we had the “Spycatcher” episode, in which Peter Wright and other MI5 officers acted outside the law and in a way that was a disgrace to the organisation; the Government of the day tried to ban the book that Wright wrote, but finally “Spycatcher” was published. Some in the security agencies took the view that Harold Wilson was possibly a long-time Soviet mole. In 1988, Edward Heath—as a former Prime Minister, he probably knew what he was talking about—told the Commons in a debate that if some in the security services

“saw someone reading the Daily Mirror, they would say, ‘Get after him, that is dangerous. We must find out where he bought it.’”—[Official Report, 15 January 1988; Vol. 125, c. 612.]

Some would say that that was a long time ago, which indeed it was, but to bring ourselves more up to date, in February 2010, just before the election, there was the case of Binyam Mohamed, who had been the subject of extraordinary rendition. He was tortured. He had lived in Britain for many years, but he was not a British citizen, and there was no doubt that he was tortured in Pakistan. A federal court in Washington confirmed and upheld his story that he had been severely tortured.

The then Master of the Rolls, Lord Neuberger, and his fellow judges concluded in 2010—not in the 1980s—that MI5 had misled the Intelligence and Security Committee and went on to say:

“Some Security Services officials appear to have a dubious record”

when it comes to human rights and coercive techniques. I would not have thought for one moment that when the then Master of the Rolls and his fellow judges made that comment they doubted the need for the security services. They were not in the business of trying to undermine the protection of our security against terrorism, but that was a very strong indictment, to say the least, of some officials. It was not argued that MI5 officials had been involved in torture. There have never been such allegations, but the argument was that MI5 officers were a party to it, knew what was going on and did not tell their political masters. In other words, they condoned it. So the security services have a record that we condemn.

This debate has arisen largely as a result of Edward Snowden’s disclosures and much of what has appeared in The Guardian. The general attitude of the authorities—politicians, the Government and others—is that we should not know about such matters, that The Guardian should not have published what it did, that Snowden is a traitor and that revealing what he did is not in the interests of the United States, Britain or other allies, so The Guardian has done a disservice. I could not disagree more.

[Mr Adam Holloway (Gravesham) (Con)]

If in the last few weeks, we had lost a city to nuclear terrorism or there had been a gigantic mass casualty, I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman’s constituents would see Edward Snowden as a trendy, cool whistleblower or as a traitor.

[Mr Winnick]

I do not believe for one moment that The Guardian published material that would help terrorists. There is no evidence of that. It is all very well the hon. Gentleman acting as a spokesperson for those who want to damage The Guardian, but they do not produce any evidence. They simply say, as the hon. Gentleman has just done, that if there were some atrocity, The Guardian should be held responsible. Where is the evidence, and why would The Guardian or any other newspaper want to help terrorists? The hon. Gentleman is saying that The Guardian is totally irresponsible and willing to publish something that could aid terrorism, when there is not the slightest evidence of that.

On Friday, The Guardian published information that the German Chancellor’s mobile phone had been monitored for years by the US National Security Agency. Is he suggesting that that information will help terrorists, or that the international terrorist network is now in a better position to cause harm to us or our allies as a result of that information? Should we not know that that has occurred? If the hon. Gentleman wants to respond, I will give way.

[Mr Holloway]

I welcome this debate. I was making a simple point about Edward Snowden and whether the hon. Gentleman’s constituents would think he was a terrorist in the event that what I described had happened. I did not even mention The Guardian.

[Mr Winnick]

My hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich East (Mr Watson) spoke about the latest technology. I opposed my own Government on identity cards because I thought they would be an intrusion into civil liberties. Such documents should not be introduced, except perhaps in war time, because they would not assist in the struggle against terrorism in any way. I was pleased that they dropped the proposal, but the growth in information technology to which reference has been made several times during the debate and the amount of information that the intelligence agencies can accumulate would have been unthinkable even 10 years ago and in some ways that dwarfs the dangers posed by identity cards. That is why I take the view that it is unlikely that the parliamentary oversight that we are debating today, despite some of the changes that I am pleased about, including the additional powers that have been given to the Committee, will be effective, but oversight is essential.

Going back to The Guardian, during Monday’s debate on the Prime Minister’s statement on the European Council, he said:

“I do not want to have to use injunctions, D notices or other, tougher measures; it is much better to appeal to newspapers’ sense of social responsibility. However, if they do not demonstrate some social responsibility, it will be very difficult for the Government to stand back and not to act.”—[Official Report, 28 October 2013; Vol. 569, c. 667.]

That is the most blatant threat to the press in recent times. It says in effect, “Do as I say or the Government will take the necessary measures.” That is all the more unfortunate while we are debating a royal charter that is being described as no threat to the press. What the Prime Minister said on Monday is very much a threat to the press. I tabled a question to the Prime Minister asking what information had appeared in The Guardian on intelligence matters that the Government objected to on security grounds. The answer, which I could have given when I tabled the question, was that he had nothing to add.

Oral Answers to Questions

Adam Holloway Excerpts

Monday 12th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

The right hon. Gentleman may have misspoken in his question. He referred to the NPIA closing in 12 weeks. It will not be closing in 12 weeks: we have already made it clear that the NPIA will be closed by the end of December 2012, to allow time for the full and proper transfer of its functions, where necessary, to other organisations. We will inform Parliament of the transfer of those functions shortly.

[Mr Adam Holloway (Gravesham) (Con)]

11. What steps she is taking to tackle metal theft.

[Craig Whittaker (Calder Valley) (Con)]

12. What steps she is taking to tackle metal theft.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (James Brokenshire)]

The Government recognise the growing problem of metal theft and are taking urgent steps to address it. The Home Office is discussing with other Departments what legislative changes are necessary to assist enforcement agencies and deter offenders, including introducing a new licence regime for scrap metal dealers and prohibiting cash payments. We are also working with the Association of Chief Police Officers to establish a dedicated metal theft taskforce.

[Mr Holloway]

Metal theft costs us a huge amount of money in this country, as the Minister knows, whether it is of dodgy copper wire or lead from churches such as those in Ifield in my constituency. Is there any argument for seizing the entire inventories of metal dealers found to be purchasing what are effectively stolen goods?

[James Brokenshire]

I certainly recognise the impact that metal theft has on our communities, with the estimated cost ranging anywhere between £220 million and £777 million per annum. We underline and recognise the seriousness attached to metal theft, which is why we are seeking to establish a new taskforce better to inform intelligence and ensure that those responsible for such crimes are brought to justice.