Refugee Family Reunion

Afzal Khan Excerpts

Thursday 21st June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Afzal Khan (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Angus Brendan MacNeil) on securing the debate and on the work he has been doing in this area. Many Members have made contributions to the debate this afternoon, and they have been thought-provoking and positive.

This is Refugee Week and it is appropriate that we acknowledge the work done by many British charities both in this country and abroad. I have seen the work that goes on day in, day out in my own city of Manchester. Only a few weeks ago, I went to Bangladesh with the Rafay Mussarat Foundation. In two days during the month of Ramadan, it delivered over 300,000 meals. We should be proud of the work that charities do, and how the British people contribute and help refugees both here and in the rest of the world. In Refugee Week, it has been wonderful to celebrate all the ways that refugees have enriched our lives and our society. Yesterday, I too was at Speaker’s House with the UNHCR to hear inspiring stories of refugees.

The celebrations have been somewhat overshadowed, however, by the tragic and shocking images from the US of children being forcibly separated from their families and caged like animals. We have all been disturbed by the recordings of crying children and images from inside these centres. It is estimated that nearly 2,000 children have been separated from their parents since the zero-tolerance policy began in April. More than 100 were under the age of four.

The scenes from the US are a stark reminder of the consequences of the worst excesses of a hostile and criminalising approach to migrants and refugees. While the Prime Minister has correctly criticised Trump’s approach to family break-up, this Government’s policies have the same effect. Our immigration system breaks up families, too. Currently, adult refugees can apply only for their spouse and dependent children under 18 to join them in the UK. This leaves grandparents, siblings and children over 18 stranded in peril.

We also have the perverse situation where unaccompanied children are not allowed to sponsor family members to join them. Tesfa fled Eritrea when he was still a child. After a terrible year-long journey, when he was crammed on a boat crossing the Mediterranean with 400 other people, he arrived in the UK and claimed asylum. He is now living and studying here but finds it very hard to be without his family—the people he feels most safe and secure with. He has no right to sponsor them to join him in the UK.

When we grant refugee status to someone, we need to provide them with a realistic chance of integrating in the UK. That means English language training and not cutting off asylum support after 28 days, which is shorter than the minimum five weeks that it takes to apply for universal credit, and it means allowing them to reunite with their families.

The private Member’s Bill from the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar will rectify some anomalies and allow refugee families to be reunited in the UK. Will the Minister confirm whether the Government will support the Bill at its next stage? If not, will she confirm that the Government will not block it in the way they are blocking my private Member’s Bill on boundaries? This is a matter of morality, and it is vital that the will of the House be heard and respected.

There has been some troubling rhetoric from the Government in our previous debates about family reunion. They have argued that we do not want to create pull factors to attract refugees to come to the UK, as if there were not enough push factors to force people to flee their homes. I assure the Minister that that is never done lightly. Donald Trump’s rhetoric over the past few days has shown the chilling extreme that this kind of thinking can lead to. I hope that the Minister will unequivocally condemn Trump’s remarks about allowing the US to be a “migrant camp” or “refugee holding facility”.

[Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent point—refugees are indeed to be valued. While they are fleeing injustices from other parts of the world, we should not be following the example of President Trump in the United States. If anything, we should be showing compassion in our policy towards refugees.

[Afzal Khan]

I thank my hon. Friend for his contribution and wholeheartedly agree—[Interruption.]

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. There seems to be a bit of concern—every Member who is here was here when I came into the Chair. [Interruption.] Let us leave it to the Chair to decide whether interventions can be made.

[Afzal Khan]

Will the Minister halt the Government’s current approach, which seems to be to make the lives of refugees and asylum seekers in the UK so awful that nobody would ever want to come? I will mention two ways in which this has emerged particularly acutely.

First, the conditions in some private asylum accommodation are abhorrent. My attention was recently drawn to private asylum accommodation in my constituency that was infested with cockroaches, rodents and bedbugs. Nobody, let alone families with children, should be forced to live in these conditions. This accommodation passed safety and standards tests, so will the Minister review these standards? Unfortunately, we know that this is not an isolated case. Our asylum accommodation system is not fit for purpose. I fear that, on a certain level, the Government accept these conditions for a reason connected with their pull factor argument. They want the asylum process in the UK to be so awful that no one will risk it.

The renewal of the asylum accommodation contracts is coming up. Can the Minister tell us which private bodies, separate from local authorities, have been contracted to provide housing for refugees? Can she also tell us something about the involvement of private firms in the rehousing of refugees, temporary or otherwise? What assessment has been made of their performance delivery, and are any new contracts likely to be awarded this year?

Indefinite immigration detention continues to be a blight on our country’s moral record. Refugees and asylum seekers are frequently detained hundreds of miles from where they were living, and they are moved around constantly, often during the night. That makes it very difficult for them to maintain contact with family and friends, especially when phones are routinely confiscated. The current system to prevent vulnerable people from being detained is not working. We know that torture survivors and other vulnerable people are not identified before their detention and that it is extremely difficult for them to be released once they are there, although there has been a significant reduction in the number of pregnant women in detention.

I look forward to reading the Shaw review and the Government’s response when they are published. I hope that they will propose the far-reaching reforms that are so desperately needed.

The Labour party is clear about this issue. We would uphold the right to a family life. We would allow the carers or parents of child refugees to come here. We would also end the practice of deporting children who are not entitled to be here once they turn 18, even when their parents are entitled to be here. We would end indefinite detention and the outsourcing of detention, and we would ensure that families fleeing war and persecution were housed in safe and sanitary conditions.