Unaccompanied Children (Greece and Italy)

Alison McGovern Excerpts

Thursday 23rd February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the Government’s support for the Syrian refugee crisis; commends the UK on its provision of aid to Syria and the region, the resettlement programmes and support to unaccompanied children in France; acknowledges that in 2016 over 30,000 unaccompanied children arrived by sea in Greece and Italy; notes that only 8 children were transferred from Greece and Italy under the Dublin III Regulation last year and none under the Dubs scheme; expresses disappointment that the Dubs Scheme will be ending with only 350 children benefiting; calls on the Government to work with the Greek and Italian governments to support access to family reunification under the Dublin III Regulation in a timely manner; and further calls on the Government to continue to monitor local authority capacity for further transfers of children under the Dubs scheme, consulting with local authorities at least once every financial year.

The protection of vulnerable child refugees is not a party political issue. It does not matter on which Benches we sit in this House or what colour rosettes we wear on election day; the belief that we have duties and responsibilities to refugee children is not particular to any one political party, faction or ideology. I therefore start by thanking the other sponsors of the debate—the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Heidi Allen), the right hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake) and the hon. Member for Glasgow North East (Anne McLaughlin)—and by thanking the Backbench Business Committee for recognising the importance and bipartisan nature of the issue in granting time for the debate today.

Just a few days after I presented the application to the Backbench Business Committee to secure this debate, the Government made an announcement on child refugees, and it is with that that I must start. Let me be clear: the decision to cancel the Dubs scheme after admitting only 350 children shames Britain. It must not stand. That amendment, won after a hard fight by activists inside and outside this place, was a symbol of the Government’s recognition that we can and should do more for those children who are in need of our help. We all had different views about whether it went far enough, but we were united in our belief that we should honour not only our international commitments but the history and legacy of our country.

Lord, Alf, Dubs of Battersea arrived in Britain a refugee as part of the Kindertransport—one of the proudest moments in the history of our country. He is living proof that refugees are not a burden to our country or our culture, but a part of us—a part of the British family. But now this: 350 children and the door slams shut. That is only about half the number of children that one man, the great Sir Nicholas Winton, managed to bring to this country. Is that really it? We in this House were led to believe that at least 3,000 children would arrive under the Dubs scheme. Honestly, that was not enough for me, but it was a good start.

I am sure that I speak for many when I say that I am angry that the Government have let us all down. Worse than that is the fate of children in Europe today who thought that they were coming to Britain—children from Syria, Somalia and Darfur who have told journalists that they may as well clamber on to lorries to get to safety now, as they have given up on our country keeping its promises.

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

We were led to expect that there would be at least 3,000 children. My hon. Friend will recall the statement by the then Minister for Immigration, now the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, on 21 April:

“We will commit to resettling several hundred individuals in the first year with a view to resettling up to 3,000 individuals over the lifetime of this Parliament, the majority of whom will be children.”—[Official Report, 21 April 2016; Vol. 608, c. 19WS.]

Is it clear to her why that clear commitment has been broken?

[Alison McGovern]

My right hon. Friend makes a very good point, and one that I will direct to the Minister. It is his responsibility to answer that question today.

The Government made two arguments to justify their decision. I will talk about pull factors later, but first, let me deal with local authority capacity. It is not true that there is no space left for Dubs children in local authority care. The Home Office cannot make that claim because it has not even asked about Dubs spaces in future. Let us consider Lewisham. It said that it can take 23 children, but it has received just one. How many places did local authorities offer for Dubs children? Does the Home Office know? If not, how can Ministers say that there are no places left? Will the Minister publish the figures? Will he tell us how many children each local authority has taken, so that civil society groups and Members of Parliament can work with them to try to get more spaces? The House deserves answers. There is much more to be done with local authorities to resettle children under the Dubs scheme. We cannot and should not give up.

[Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)]

Would the hon. Lady, like me and I am sure other Members, like to know from the Government how many people have been allowed to come under the equivalent of the Canada sponsorship scheme? As I understand it, so far two people have been accommodated under that scheme.

[Alison McGovern]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his question, which, again, the Minister must answer today.

It is deeply depressing to start a debate that was supposed to focus on how to build on the Dubs amendment by having to fight the same fight over again. The debate is about how we can do more for the many unaccompanied child refugees stuck in Greece and Italy. The Minister will talk about the fantastic support that this country offers refugee camps in the middle east and north Africa, how much we spend and how we do not want people to attempt the perilous journey across the sea. I will wholeheartedly agree with him. I am proud of our work overseas. It is right that we do everything possible to look after people in the region and keep them out of the hands of people traffickers who exploit their desperation. Nobody wants people, least of all children, to board those boats and make that crossing. However, we must move beyond those generalities. We are talking about desperate individuals, and hundreds of children do board those boats and end up in Greece and Italy. When they arrive, they remain vulnerable to the same traffickers who put them on the boats in the first place. They are exploited physically and often sexually. They are made to see and endure things that no child should ever have to. Unaccompanied children are the most at risk, and as the conflict continues unabated in Syria and parts of Africa, more children arrive in Europe without an adult to look after them.

[Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)]

The hon. Lady is making a passionate case for her view. I represent Dover, and across the channel we had the Calais jungle, which was the biggest migrant magnet, where people were condemned to live in squalor. They were there in the hope of getting into Britain. The problem is that taking people in from Europe simply increases the pull of the migrant magnet. We know that because we are on the frontline.

[Alison McGovern]

As a Member of Parliament who also represents a port area of our country, I pay tribute to all those who work to keep our ports and our borders safe. I will come to the hon. Gentleman’s argument about a pull factor in a moment.

[Brendan O'Hara (Argyll and Bute) (SNP)]

Some of us were lucky enough last night to attend a screening of Ross Kemp’s documentary, “Libya’s Migrant Hell”, an outstanding, if harrowing, account of what is going on in Libya. It should be compulsory viewing for all hon. Members. Given that Amnesty calculates that one in four of the people who make that journey are children, does the hon. Lady agree that it is incumbent on us to show far more compassion and protect that most vulnerable group?

[Alison McGovern]

The hon. Gentleman makes a very good point, with which many hon. Members will agree. To put it simply, the risk to children does not end when they reach dry land. The boat may be behind them, but the danger is not. The refugee camps, especially in Greece, are overflowing, with children being left outside, cold and alone. In Greece, only about half of all unaccompanied child refugees are in official shelters. The rest are stuck in squats waiting for their applications to be processed. Even if they do find shelter, they are very vulnerable indeed. This simply cannot go on. We have a duty to help these children and we must not turn them away.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

Some of these children have relatives in this country. I would be very interested to know how the Minister is going to respond to this: how many of those children’s applications are still outstanding?

[Alison McGovern]

My hon. Friend asks a crucial question. If, by the end of the debate, the Minister has not answered that question, I think many of us will be up on our feet demanding answers.

We made great progress, working with the French authorities, on resettling children under Dubs and, as alluded to by my hon. Friend, under the Dublin III regulation where children have family members living in this country. I welcome the progress made on that front, but we are still asking Greece and Italy, two countries that are not equipped to deal with the refugee flows by themselves, to accommodate the vast majority of them. According to UNICEF, more than 30,000 unaccompanied children arrived in those two countries last year alone. That is difficult, to say the least, for those countries, problematic for Europe and, most of all, bad for the children themselves.

We know that, despite our best efforts, children are still making the journey alone. We know they are arriving in Greece and Italy, which are not able to deal with them all. We know that many have family here and that it is in their best interests to be transferred to the UK under the Dublin agreement. So why are we not doing more to help? Some 30,000 children arrived in Greece and Italy last year, but just eight of them transferred to the UK. One member of Home Office staff in Greece and one in Italy are charged with assessing and processing children whose best interests lie in a transfer to the UK.

[Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on making a very powerful speech. Many Members, particularly those of us with city constituencies, will have had extensive experience of working with former unaccompanied children who are resident in this country. We know that the length of insecurity and uncertainty that prevails before they can make a successful application often leaves permanent scars and damage, particularly to their mental health. Is it not absolutely essential that we cut through that and provide certainty for as many children as we can as quickly as possible?

[Alison McGovern]

My hon. Friend speaks from great experience and I hope the Minister listened to what she said. If the Minister is really prepared to consider this matter, he should watch the documentary made by Liverpool footballer Dejan Lovren about his experience as a refugee and the uncertainty that he lived through. He has been brave in speaking openly about his life. I encourage the Minister to take heed of his words. It is no wonder that it has taken the best part of a year for many children’s applications to be processed, leaving them in the kind of limbo my hon. Friend mentions.

Let me be clear with the Minister. There are agencies working in Greece and Italy with the capacity to make referrals, but they will not raise the hopes of children when the process itself is so dire. The Government must commit today to streamlining the system, so that agencies and children have confidence in it and can start to make referrals quickly. We know that this can be done because it was done in France when hundreds of applications were processed in a matter of weeks. This situation is just not acceptable and we must do more.

I want to address an argument we hear constantly from the Government when we talk about resettling refugees—a line we have heard repeatedly from the Home Secretary, especially when talking about the Dubs amendment. She says it encourages people traffickers and that it acts as an incentive for perilous journeys. We have heard again today that it is a draw for migrants. The Government must drop this feeble line of argument once and for all.

People are not getting on those boats because of pull factors; they are doing so because they are fleeing war, poverty, famine and exploitation in their own countries. Even refugee camps in Greece or Italy, dangerous though they are, are safer than the hell they are running away from. We know this and the Government know this. If they do not, they should try to understand the reality. They should look at a picture of the ruins of Homs or Aleppo and tell me again about pull factors. They should see the desperation on the faces of starving people in Yemen or Somalia and explain to me again how Dubs was an incentive. They should speak to a child escaping forced servitude as a soldier in Eritrea, and repeat again to me that our immigration system is a draw. It is not; it was not; and we should not pretend otherwise. Have the Government any hard evidence to support that claim, and, if so, will the Minister produce it?

If the Government really believe the pull factors nonsense, there is just one obvious change that they could make. Under the current system, children in camps in the region can only apply to be transferred under Dublin III if they have a parent living in the United Kingdom with whom they can be reunited, but for children already in Europe, the rule can apply to extended families, grandparents, siblings or aunts and uncles. However, many of these children are orphans.

[James Cleverly (Braintree) (Con)]

I genuinely thank the hon. Lady for giving way, but does she not recognise that the idea that pull factors do not exist just because push factors do exist is an inappropriate construct? There can be both push factors and pull factors; they are not mutually exclusive.

[Alison McGovern]

If the hon. Gentleman is suggesting that safety is a pull factor, I agree with him. If he is suggesting that not starving is a pull factor, I agree with him. If he is suggesting that escaping the bombs dropping on a child’s head is a pull factor, I entirely agree with him.

This debate will continue. I think it right for us to have the debate out in the open, and Members who disagree with me will have a chance to make their case, too.

[Charlie Elphicke]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Alison McGovern]

I will not, because I need to end my speech now.

As I was saying, many of these children are orphans who have no parents with whom they can be reunited. However, the Government are effectively saying that a child in a refugee camp in north Africa who has a grandparent in the UK is not eligible, but if that child got on a boat and went to Italy, he or she would be. That is madness. Will the Minister agree to think again and allow children in the region to apply under Dublin III to be reunited with their extended families in the UK?

As the Minister has heard from Members on both sides of the House, there are many points that he must address in his speech. In respect of Dublin III, will he commit himself to improving the system in Greece and Italy? Will he send more staff, speed up the processing of applications and work with the agencies in those countries to identify eligible children? Will he commit himself to allowing Dublin transfers from the region to extended families in the UK? In respect of Dubs, will he show us the figures on local authority capacity? Will he at least agree to monitor capacity and increase the numbers where possible? Will he, once and for all, drop the pretence that the main factor that is dragging children on to those boats is our immigration system, rather than war, poverty and famine?

I started by saying that this was not a party-political issue, and I stand by that. This is about British values, which we all share, and our desire to honour those values. Across Europe and the world, people are questioning whether we mean what we say when we talk about Britain as a welcoming, open, tolerant and decent country. It is up to us to show that we are who we say we are, that we will live up to the legacy of our past and that we will not turn away from the suffering and desperation of children on our own doorsteps who need our help.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Jim Cunningham]

rose—

[Alison McGovern]

rose—

[Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Goodwill]

I will make a bit of progress, because I want to talk specifically about the trafficking issue that has been raised. I make it clear that the Government agree that safe and legal routes can help combat trafficking, which is why we have six other legal routes by which children can safely come to the United Kingdom, but the migration crisis has shown that pull factors such as policy changes and political messaging can influence the movement of migrants.

For example, there must be a reason why around two thirds of asylum seekers in the EU last year chose Germany and Sweden, and it is important to note that they did so after passing through many safe countries en route. Whether it is push factors or pull factors that motivate those children to come to Europe, it must surely always be in the child’s best interest to enable them to come before they need to make dangerous journeys to Europe and before they become unaccompanied. The Government’s priority is to focus on the most vulnerable children who are fleeing conflict and persecution in the region.

[Alison McGovern]

The Minister is laying out the Government’s priorities. Will he be clear about what he said about capacity in Greece? He said that we have 115 staff in Greece. How many of them are working on transfers to the UK?

[Mr Goodwill]

I can give the hon. Lady the exact figures in a letter, but we have 115 people there.

Our work in Calais shows that there were only a handful of children from Syria. I note that the motion talks specifically about children from Syria, and indeed the hon. Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern) talked about children fleeing Aleppo and other horrible situations in Syria. Would she therefore be surprised to know that, of the 750 children who came from Calais during the clearance, fewer than 10 came from Syria? That is why I believe we are doing the right thing by going to the refugee camps and working with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to roll out similar schemes to the ones that the Australians, the Canadians and the Americans were delivering to enable those children in the most need to come to the UK.

If our aim as a country is to help those most in need who are fleeing conflict and persecution, the Government’s strategy is the right one. I welcome last week’s statement by Filippo Grandi, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, in which he said that, in relation to resettlement, the UK is doing “very remarkable things.” The UK has a proud history of providing protection to those who need it, and we will continue to play our part in protecting the most vulnerable children affected by the migration crisis. The Government have taken significant steps to improve an already comprehensive approach to supporting asylum-seeking and refugee children. We will continue to be at the forefront of international efforts to address the migration crisis. The UK can be proud of its overall contribution to date, and it can be proud that we will continue to deliver on the programmes I have described.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alison McGovern]

I began the debate by explaining that it was cross party because the fate of refugees is a cause that belongs to no one political party, no one ideology and no one faction. I remain of that opinion after listening to Members’ contributions.

Notwithstanding that, my right hon. Friend the Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott), who has shown great courage in recent weeks, my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy), my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) and my hon. Friends the Members for Ealing, Southall (Mr Sharma) and for Bradford West (Naz Shah) made me deeply proud to be a Labour person, as I always will be. However, in listening to the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Heidi Allen), the hon. and learned Member for Torridge and West Devon (Mr Cox), the hon. Member for Colchester (Will Quince), the right hon. Member for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan), and the hon. Members for Dundee West (Chris Law) and for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald), I felt proud of my country.

The Minister, however, decided to speak at the beginning of the debate. When I understood that he wished to do that, I hoped that he would set the tone by making a new announcement or giving us some new information that might make us reconsider the concern that some of us felt. Unfortunately, the opposite was the case. I remain with unanswered questions. We suspect that we do not have enough staff in Greece to process applications properly, and the Minister said that he will write to me on that point, for which I am grateful. We still do not really have a true picture of local authority capacity to accept new child refugees under the Dubs amendment, although Members of all parties gave examples of their council leaders, who have said clearly and unequivocally that they can do more. The Minister must therefore make a proper formal assessment and either write to the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford, or place the information in the House or provide it in some other public way.

Most importantly, the Minister should commit to a proper reopening of the Dubs scheme. Given that we have clear evidence that there is widespread support for the scheme and that local authorities can and will accept more children, there is no reason for the limit of 350. Whatever the rights and wrongs of what was said to whom, where and when, as many Members have said, nobody went into the debate believing that that was the number that we would accept. The Minister must commit to a proper reopening of Dubs.

I have no wish to detain the House any longer, but I want to conclude by saying that there are very clear practical reasons why turning away from refugees is a bad idea. Whether it is the impact of the message on people in poor countries who are more likely to turn to the siren voices of extremists and terrorists if we do not stand up for the values we say we believe in, or it is the wider consequences of poverty that lead to conflict in the first place, from a practical perspective, turning away refugees is just not in our national interest.

Having met refugees myself, I remain of the view that if the average British person who probably thinks about these issues for no more than a couple of minutes every month or so met a refugee and saw what those of us in this House have seen, they would feel absolutely clear that they wanted to help. None of them would turn away. Yet just now our world is caught up in the oldest of stories: when times are hard extreme politicians turn up and tell ordinary working people to blame foreigners rather than to see the truth that people who become refugees are just like us.

The way forward for the Government is clear: reopen Dubs, get more staff to Greece and get children to safety. Until they do so, I and my colleagues from all parties will be back here time and again.

Question put.

The Speaker’s opinion as to the decision of the Question being challenged, the Division was deferred until Wednesday 1 March (Standing Order No. 41A).