Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill (First sitting)

Alison McGovern Excerpts

Committee Debate: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 12th February 2019 Public Bill Committees

[Paul Blomfield]

Q Do you not find it extraordinary that such a historic measure, which affects so many people in this country, does not have that provision?

Professor Ryan: Yes, indeed. That is why I started with that observation—to try to ask for the Bill to be seen in those terms. Understandably, because of the politics around leaving the European Union, everyone is concerned with the moment, as it were, but I urge the Government to take a longer view of what the Bill really means and think about other things that could go in the Bill because of the long life that it may have.

[Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)]

Q Professor Manning, on behalf of the Migration Advisory Committee, in relation to EEA nationals working in this country, you were careful to say just now that the root cause of low wages in the care sector is not immigration, but rather the funding of the system. In relation to other sectors, you seem to be saying that you believe that constraint in the labour market could have a positive effect on wages. Could you just say a little bit more about what you think the channel to that is? Is it excess profits in manufacturing that management will decide to divert to wages? Is it efficiencies that the manufacturing industry has not invested in, and now will? What do you think the channel will be? It is one thing to say that immigration has been neutral to negative—your words—but another to say that constraint in the immigration system affecting the labour market will push up wages. This is not simple supply and demand, is it?

Professor Manning: It is not just simple supply and demand, but supply and demand is relevant. It is important not to exaggerate the role that immigration plays in everything that is happening in the labour market as a whole. We have a very tight labour market at the moment, and demand for labour is running ahead of supply in many sectors. There are complaints about shortages and vacancies in a lot of places. Solving that through immigration, it is said, means increasing the supply of labour to bring demand and supply into line, but in our view that will not work because when immigrants come, they increase supply. They earn money, spend money, and add to labour demand more or less in balance. That is why the overall effect is neutral.

We think the way in which you should respond to imbalance in the labour market is through raising wages. Where do those rising wages come from? Partly, employers are put under pressure to use labour more efficiently when labour is scarce, so that is part of the efficiencies that you talked about. There might be some sectors that have been quite profitable in recent years, so there is some scope to squeeze profits, although there are many sectors where margins are tight. If you talk to employers, they would say they really have not got that much choice.

It is also the case that workers will vote with their feet and go to work for employers that they think offer them the best deal. In that process, there are good employers and bad employers. When labour markets are tight, good employers do well and bad employers find it harder. That is a natural process by which we have rising living standards in the economy.

[Alison McGovern]

Q I just want to be clear about what you are saying. Obviously, there are second order effects, so there is the simple function of supply and demand, which might put pressure on employers to raise wages, but the second order effects will depend on their business circumstances. For example, take a manufacturing firm in the north of England where they have already heavily invested in machinery and robotics, where the nature of what they do has not been profitable. The car industry has not been massively profitable over the past few years. They will find it quite difficult to put wages up and maintain viability for their business.

Professor Manning: There are British employers at the cutting edge of new technology, so it is very hard to find productivity gains. But we also know that productivity in British industry across the piece lags behind our competitors, notably in Germany, quite substantially. Within all sectors there is a huge range of productivity. There are very efficient employers, but a lot of research suggests there is quite a long tail of not-so-productive employers where there are potential productivity gains to be had by moving to current best practice.

[Alison McGovern]

Q Has MAC disaggregated that data? Productivity gains and where they could be made affect different regional economies in quite a diverse manner. Areas dominated by manufacturing, where there has been investment, would be different from areas that have many more firms that are less productive. Does MAC have any evidence on the regional impact of the Bill?

Professor Manning: In the interim report that we published last spring, we did a broad sectoral analysis in which we looked at trends in productivity. We also did a regional analysis, but we have not done a full mix of regions by industry. I don’t know if you can say a particular industry in a particular region, but I have a particular view on that.

[Alison McGovern]

Q Okay. Professor Manning, you are saying that we do not fully understand how the Bill will affect the different locations in our country, even though, economically speaking, we know we have a pretty unequal country. We do not really know, do we?

Professor Manning: We did an analysis of how it would impact different regions. For example, when one talks about salary thresholds, we have tables on how this would affect different regions. But you are right to point out that there are very big regional inequalities in the UK that probably have been allowed to fester for too long. One of the reasons, for example, why we do not recommend regional variations in salary thresholds is because we do not want to institutionalise some parts of the country as low wage and other parts as high wage.

[Alison McGovern]

Q One final question, if I may. Professor Ryan, you have said to us on several occasions that there is a major gap in this Bill as regards EU nationals who will have settled status. You mentioned a parallel with the Windrush scandal. Is the message we should take from your evidence that unless the Bill is amended, it will open us up to another Windrush?

Professor Ryan: I would not want to be that dramatic.

[Alison McGovern]

Q Or it could.

Professor Ryan: It is more that Parliament needs to think about future-proofing the immigration arrangements that are put in place, to think about whether this will work over the long term and not leave people out. To take the Windrush parallel, it is the children from those times who, later in life, are having to prove their status. Exactly the same could happen with EU citizens; the children of those citizens may struggle later if things are not designed correctly to establish what is happening now. Whatever arrangements are put in place, that should be part of what is being addressed.

I believe that, somehow, through primary legislation, guarantees need to be put in place for current residents. I recognise that could be done in subsequent legislation—the withdrawal agreement Act would be another opportunity to consider this question—but, of course, if we do not have that legislation because there is no deal, this seems to be the opportunity. I realise that is a difficulty, but perhaps it should be addressed now.

[Alison McGovern]

Q The clock is ticking.

[Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)]

Q You are being very clear, Professor Ryan, that something should be written into the Bill that protects the rights of people who are here at the moment.

Professor Ryan: This is not the only opportunity to do it, but if there is no deal, this may be the best opportunity to do it. That is really what I am saying.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

We are more than halfway through this session, and we have not heard anything from Dr Greening.

[Alison McGovern]

Q If I may say so, I would hesitate to describe anybody who comes to work in this country as “shipped in”. I think that is unfortunate. I want to ask about our ageing population, to follow up on the question asked by my colleague Nick Thomas-Symonds. Do you think that the dependency ratio, under the situation that you envisage with reduced immigration, will get better or worse?

Lord Green: First of all, what was the word that you were worried about?

[Alison McGovern]

Q You described people coming to work in this country as being “shipped in”.

Lord Green: Oh yes—well, they were shipped in.

[Alison McGovern]

Q It is unfortunate language, with respect, Lord Green. It is dehumanising language.

Lord Green: I want you to understand how this system worked. It was actually employers who brought them in—can I say in bulk?—together, as a group, in order to work in the fields.

[Alison McGovern]

Q The point has been made. How do you see your proposal as improving—or otherwise—our dependency ratio in the labour market?

Lord Green: Of course it would increase the dependency ratio. There is no doubt about that. Equally, there is only one way to deal with that, which is to raise the retirement age. If you are going to try to use immigration to deal with the dependency ratio, it becomes a Ponzi scheme, because as the new migrants get older you have more older people, and therefore you need more migrants in order to restore the balance. That is the oldest story in the book.

[Alison McGovern]

Q What would you like the retirement age to be raised to—something like 70 or 75?

Lord Green: You can do various calculations on that. I do not have them in my head. I think that so long as we live longer and healthier, there is perfectly good reason to raise the retirement age.

[Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP)]

Q I want to follow on the back of Ms McGovern’s question. You did speak of humans as being shipped in and shipped out, as if they were canned goods rather than actual human beings. That leads me to a point you raised in the oral evidence session for the previous Immigration Bill, when you described asylum seekers, and victims of exploitation and traffickers, as “these people”. Would you agree that this sort of careless and dehumanising terminology has fuelled much of the anti-immigrant rhetoric in the UK, and has perhaps even led to Brexit itself?

Lord Green: No, I think that is completely irrelevant, frankly. I hope that this is a meeting in which I can speak to you clearly and simply. If I was making some public speech, I would use different words. This is not a public speech, I hope.

Future Immigration

Alison McGovern Excerpts

Wednesday 19th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

The hon. Gentleman is clearly lobbying for a pay rise for all members of the Cabinet—I will leave that to him, but it is not something the Cabinet is asking for. It is important that the threshold for the highly skilled visa route set out in the White Paper is based on evidence and works for each part of the country. The MAC has suggested—I emphasise that this is based on its own independent research—that the threshold should be £30,000, but further work and extensive engagement with businesses, devolved authorities, Members of Parliament and others is required to determine what that should actually be.

[Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)]

I think that my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting) actually wanted a pay cut for members of the Cabinet. I had thought that the Home Secretary was a free marketeer, but what he has given us today is a bureaucrats charter to increase paperwork and red tape around business. The White Paper states, on page 47:

“The MAC has recommended lowering the skills threshold for the new skilled workers…while maintaining the minimum salary threshold of £30,000.”

This is clearly not a skills-based immigration policy, but a money-based immigration policy. Will he therefore explain how on earth he thinks our country plans to deal with its demographic challenge?

[Sajid Javid]

I am afraid that I do not agree with the hon. Lady’s assertions. She suggests that somehow this will lead to more bureaucracy and red tape, but having no cap and no resident labour market test for high-skilled workers and more use of e-gates are all examples of where there will be less bureaucracy and less red tape.

Grenfell Tower Inquiry

Alison McGovern Excerpts

Monday 14th May 2018 Westminster Hall

[Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Mr Wilson, and to follow all the fine contributions to this debate. I begin by congratulating the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully) on securing the debate and on reading into the record the names of those we lost. It is very important that he did so. I know so little about who those people were, but I hope that in due course we will all come to know much more about them. It was an honour to meet relatives of the deceased in Speaker’s House—I think we all felt that. I am sure that we will come to know them very well in this place.

I am the Member of Parliament for Wirral South, but from 2006 to 2010 I was the councillor in the London Borough of Southwark for the Brunswick Park ward, which contained the Sceaux Gardens estate, in the middle of which was Lakanal House. On 3 July 2009, Lakanal went up in flames. I can see that block in my mind’s eye as real as if it were that day. Six people, including a one-month-old baby, died in that disaster, and the inquest found that those were unnecessary and preventable deaths. We have heard people in this debate say that the Grenfell fire must never happen again. To me, those words are meaningless, because it has happened again—it is happening again. I saw Grenfell on the television, and to me it was alarmingly familiar. I have seen what the families have gone through since the day of the Grenfell Tower disaster. That, too, is alarmingly familiar, because unfortunately neither the disaster nor the secondary tragedy of the Government’s response to the disaster needed to happen.

Other hon. Members have talked persuasively about the recommendations following the Lakanal fire. It is a matter of great grief to all of us who were involved with Lakanal that the recommendations and the conclusions of the inquest were not progressed with more rigour. But there is something else. The Prime Minister, when she was Home Secretary, commissioned Bishop James Jones to report on the experience of the Hillsborough families. My hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Dan Carden) has talked about how all of this discussion and debate rings bells with us because it is all the same. Bishop James Jones’s report on the experience of the Hillsborough families was called “The patronising disposition of unaccountable power”. I would ask any person to listen to the contribution of my hon. Friend the Member for Kensington (Emma Dent Coad) and ask whether what she described does not amount to the patronising disposition of unaccountable power. Of course it does. Hillsborough was not about football and the Grenfell disaster was not about a tower block in isolation: it was about the relationship between citizens and the state that was supposed to protect and respect them. Of course a diverse panel for the inquiry, for all the reasons that hon. Members have gone through, was vital, but we need more, and I will spend just a couple of minutes saying what more the Government can do.

First, the Government should answer Bishop James Jones’s call for a charter for families bereaved through public tragedy. In his report, he gives all the details of what that should contain. The report came out in November, but the Government have not responded. All this could have been avoided if they had.

Secondly, the Government should bring forward their own Bill on a public advocate at inquests. That proposal was brought forward by Michael Wills, a peer, and the Government are committed to implementing it. Just bring forward the Bill. Let us reform inquests now; let us not wait another second.

The third issue is the Hillsborough law proposals, which were first put to this House by my friend, Mayor Andy Burnham. Those proposals include reform of legal aid so that we get the parity of arms to which the Scottish National party spokesperson, the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry), alluded. The importance of that is absolutely clear. I worry greatly that we will again get into a situation in which families are worrying about legal costs and whether their legal advice will be sustained, while the state has all before it—whatever expensive QC it needs. Let us prevent that from happening now before the problem arises.

Fourthly, and most important to me, is a duty of candour. This is not party political. The Government have already implemented a duty of candour for NHS staff, but I want to change the situation in every council and every Government Department up and down the country, where people are told, “Don’t admit you were wrong. Don’t accept responsibility. Don’t give the information out. Don’t make it publicly available. Because you will be liable.” I want the lawyers to say to them, “You know what? You’ll be liable if you don’t tell the truth. You’ll be liable if you don’t give the information out.” Trust the public.

The Government, as I have said, accept the policy for the NHS. Let us just make it real for every other representative of the state in our country, because in the end the central question that we have to ask ourselves is this: what kind of country do we want to live in? Who are we really as British people? Are we the kind of people who see grieving families and want to worry about whether we might be responsible, or are we, as my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester West (Liz Kendall) said, the kind of people who want to reach out and help? I thought that our country had changed radically since 1989. I worry that I was wrong.

[Phil Wilson (in the Chair)]

Before we hear from the Front Benchers, I say to them that I would like to leave two or three minutes for Paul Scully to sum up the debate.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Hurd]

I am absolutely sure that that is the intention of those leading the inquiry. The process I have set out is one that is absolutely familiar and typical in relation to public inquiries. When we are talking about hundreds and thousands of documents, some judgments have to be made and some judgments will be challenged. I think there will be transparency in the form of regular bulletins from the inquiry. I would like the hon. and learned Lady and others to build into their feelings some consideration of the need to avoid unacceptable delays in the process of the inquiry. Underlying this is a strong feeling that I know well: people are worried about how long the process will take, and they are right to be, given some of the examples of the past. So these are judgments for the inquiry, but I think there will be transparency around the process and it will be open to challenge.

The third part of the petition is about the right to question witnesses. Core participants are able to suggest lines of questioning that the inquiry should pursue and, with permission from the inquiry, can ask witnesses questions through their own legal representatives. The inquiry rules are clear that the recognised legal representative of a core participant can seek permission to ask questions of a witness giving oral evidence. In his response to the inquiry’s procedural hearing in December, Sir Martin said that he would approach with an open mind any such applications, and that is the approach he will take.

[Alison McGovern]

While the Minister is covering that aspect of the inquiry, will he respond to my point about parity of arms? I know that legal resources are being made available to the families of those we lost at Grenfell, and that is a good thing, but I worry about getting into a situation in which, yet again, the state has vastly more resources at its disposal for lawyers than families do. That inequality cannot be tolerated, I am afraid.

[Mr Hurd]

I absolutely share the hon. Lady’s concern, as will anyone who has read the Bishop’s report. I also worked on the response to the death in custody review, in which exactly the same point was made by Dame Elish. There is a fundamental point here on which I hope we will make significant progress in our responses to the Bishop’s report and the death in custody review.

I wish to reassure the House about the scale and pace of the inquiry. I should also put on record commendation of the way in which Sir Martin has not only stepped up to the responsibility but driven the process at pace. Many of those who have campaigned for the change have been at pains to point out that it is not a personal criticism of him. There is tremendous respect for his integrity and his forensic ability. He is driving a very complicated process at pace. He has granted 547 core participants to the inquiry, 519 of whom are individuals from the Grenfell community. That is an unprecedented number.

Procedural hearings to consider matters relating to the conduct of the inquiry have taken place and on 27 April the inquiry published a timetable for its phase one hearings, which will focus on the factual narrative of the events on 14 June 2017. Before the evidential hearings start on 4 June, there will be two weeks of hearings, beginning on 21 May, commemorating all those who lost their lives. That will provide an opportunity for those families who lost loved ones at Grenfell Tower to commemorate them as individuals, calmly and with dignity. The bereaved families will be able to memorialise their loved ones in any way they think best, whether as a presentation, an audio recording, a short film or in any other way. That shows the inquiry’s commitment to ensuring that the bereaved, the survivors and the residents are central to its work. The counsel to the inquiry has said that by

“starting the public hearings in this way, we can ensure that, however technical and scientific the issues may become”—

and they will—

“however dry, however legal, we will never lose sight of who our work is for and why we are doing it”,

and he is right on that.

Following the commemorations, the evidential hearings will begin on 4 June. They will hear evidence from the inquiry’s expert witnesses and London fire brigade personnel. The hearings will run until the end of July. There will be no hearings in August, as the inquiry prepares to hear evidence from the bereaved, the survivors and local residents, starting on 3 September and running for approximately four weeks. Further expert witness evidence will be heard during October, and the closing statements will be made in the week beginning 29 October. Sir Martin will prepare an interim report following the end of the phase one oral evidence hearings, and the programme for the phase two hearings will be issued nearer the time.

Gender Pay Gap

Alison McGovern Excerpts

Wednesday 18th April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins]

The Act and the regulations place the responsibility for compliance with the EHRC. The EHRC is independent of the Government, but of course we work with it and watch its movements with great interest. It has set out its strategy for dealing with non-compliance. As I said, it wrote to businesses on 9 April, which has helped some to report. I understand that it has given businesses 28 days to comply or to flag up problems—for example, if they do not understand how to use the system or if they are not meeting the criteria for the number of employees—and thereafter the EHRC will look at each company that has not complied and decide what will happen.

[Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)]

The Minister knows of my concern about the gender pay gap in the financial services sector. I want to give her the opportunity to send a message to banks today by answering this question—a one-word answer is all that is needed. Should they be telling members of their staff who are concerned about the gender pay gap that they ought not to talk to one another about their personal pay?

[Victoria Atkins]

No, they should not be doing that.

Money Laundering

Alison McGovern Excerpts

Monday 19th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Wallace]

I cannot give the hon. Gentleman the answer from this Dispatch Box, but like the Scottish National party, I have been concerned that Scottish limited partnerships are remarkably popular with countries such as Russia and Ukraine. Far greater numbers are being used by those countries than they currently are by Scotland. I shall write to him with a detailed answer to his question.

[Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)]

Given the importance of wider economic sanctions to protect those in the most vulnerable countries in the world who are currently having their human rights routinely abused, what review has the Minister undertaken of the effectiveness of economic sanctions against businesses?

[Mr Wallace]

I will ask the Treasury, which leads on economic sanctions, to write to the hon. Lady with exact details of what assessment it has made of their impact. Sanctions, of course, do work in a number of scenarios. That is why we are keen to get the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Bill through the House of Commons, working together to make sure that we get the Magnitsky amendment correct. It is certainly why this piece of legislation is very important.

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).

Oral Answers to Questions

Alison McGovern Excerpts

Monday 31st October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Brandon Lewis]

I thank my hon. Friend and constituency neighbour for his question. I will make sure that my colleagues in the Department for Communities and Local Government hear what he says. There are suppression products other than sprinklers that builders can use, but we are keen to make sure that homes continue to be safe. That is one reason why the number of fires is now, fortunately, pretty much at a historically low level.

[Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)]

May I take the Home Secretary back to her answer to my hon. Friend the Member for City of Chester (Christian Matheson)? She said that people should not “leap to anger”, but I can tell her that people have been angry about Orgreave for 30 years. Specifically, Margaret Aspinall has said:

“We will never have the full truth about Hillsborough until we have the full truth about Orgreave.”

Will the Home Secretary agree wholeheartedly with my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Louise Haigh), who asked for full disclosure, and will she please, because this is never going away, just think again?

[Amber Rudd]

I do not agree that there is an equality of seriousness between Hillsborough and Orgreave. Ninety-six people died at Hillsborough: it is a different situation. Two Hillsborough criminal investigations are going on now, and they have access to the Orgreave material. There will be no change in that respect.

Calais Jungle

Alison McGovern Excerpts

Monday 10th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Amber Rudd]

The answer to the first part of my hon. Friend’s question is that the children are not confirmed as qualifying under the Dublin agreement unless that is actually dealt with by the French Government, so the charities provide the numbers and the lists to the French Government, because the children are in France; then the French Government have to confirm it to us. They have confirmed that they expect to do that within the next few days. As my hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire (Heidi Allen) noted, they are doing a census, and during the next few days we expect considerably more information to come from them, which we can work with.

[Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)]

I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes) for tabling the question. May I draw the Home Secretary’s attention to the question from the hon. Member for North Wiltshire (Mr Gray) about a taskforce? We seem to be arguing about bureaucracy, but these are children who need help. Cannot a British and French taskforce get into that camp and sort it out?

[Amber Rudd]

The hon. Lady should know—or rather, I should like to inform her—that we are doing some of that already. My officials have been over in France every other day for the past two or three weeks, and French officials come over here a lot, so that we can work together to make sure that we can deliver the outcomes that we want. As we approach the final clearances, which may be in the next week, the week after that—the French have not set a date—or the next few weeks, we expect to be very much involved in working with them in the camps to make sure that we look after the most vulnerable. I cannot give the hon. Lady more information at present. As I said earlier, we have not arrived at a final agreement with the French—there are elements that have to be further discussed and agreed—but we will arrive at one, and I hope that at that point she will be able to see us working much more closely together in the interests of everybody there.

Orgreave: Public Inquiry into Policing

Alison McGovern Excerpts

Wednesday 20th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[Amber Rudd]

The hon. Gentleman asks an important question. He is right; we hope that there will be progress under the new leadership. We will carefully follow progress under Dave Jones. My colleague the Minister for Policing and the Fire Service, my hon. Friend the Member for Great Yarmouth (Brandon Lewis), has already said he will be going to visit over the summer, so we are taking seriously the improvements that the new leadership has said that it will make.

[Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)]

The Home Secretary said that she will make a decision in the autumn, but my right hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham), my hon. Friends the Members for Liverpool, Walton (Steve Rotheram) and for Halton (Derek Twigg) and I, as chair of the all-party group on the Hillsborough disaster, spent many hours talking with the Home Secretary’s predecessor and the IPCC to understand the consequences of the decisions being made about that injustice. Will the Home Secretary speak to the Prime Minister about that experience to learn those lessons and will she commit to meeting extensively with Members about the horrific events at Orgreave?

[Amber Rudd]

I can certainly give the hon. Lady that commitment. I have already said that I will meet the right hon. Member for Leigh. If any other colleagues would like to join us in that meeting, I will also meet them to ensure that I am fully informed and up to date on the whole issue and the campaign thus far.

EU Nationals: UK Residence

Alison McGovern Excerpts

Monday 4th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[James Brokenshire]

I am very sorry, but I think that my hon. Friend has completely mischaracterised what the Home Secretary said. She was merely saying that people come and go: some people who work here may go back to their home countries. That is the fluidity that we see in labour markets and in the movements of people between different countries. That is what the Home Secretary was referring to. We want to work to ensure that the rights of those who are here are guaranteed, and that will form part of the negotiations.

[Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)]

The Minister’s answer to the question seems to be, “Trust me: it’s all in hand.” Is it any wonder that the family of my right hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) and thousands of other families up and down this country cannot trust the Government, given how they have handled the immigration question for years? May I ask the Minister to do a little better than saying, “Just trust me”, and to say whether he has made representations on this issue to his opposite numbers in the French or Spanish Governments?

[James Brokenshire]

The issue is being treated seriously. It is not about multilateral negotiations but about getting it right and assessing all the complexities that I have already highlighted this afternoon. That is the appropriate response. As the Prime Minister has said, we need to look at the issue very carefully and it will be for the next Prime Minister to act.