Unaccompanied Child Refugees: Europe

Debate between Andy Slaughter and Charlie Elphicke

Thursday 2nd November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)]

Given that I represent Dover, Calais is literally a few short miles across the water. Indeed, I can see Calais from my bedroom window. It is striking, is it not, to think about the conditions there until a year ago? I am delighted by and proud of the campaign that so many of us fought to get the Jungle dismantled. Over time, the numbers there swelled to some 10,000 people. It was a place of appalling squalor, with no sanitation facilities, no running water, no protection from the cold, and nasty, rickety shacks. The Jungle was frankly a lawless place where people traffickers roamed free, exploiting people.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

I visited the Jungle at its height. I agree that it was a far from ideal place, but does the hon. Gentleman agree that the conditions in which almost 1,000 refugees are now living around Calais are far worse?

[Charlie Elphicke]

Conditions for anyone who is living outside without food, shelter and water are appalling, but let us remember what the Jungle was like at that time. Ten thousand destitute people lived in a concentrated area. Many of them had been trafficked there by people who were exploiting and preying on them in furtherance of the evil trade of modern slavery, selling the promise of a better life in Britain. In reality, if the traffickers did get them across the border, it almost invariably resulted in them disappearing from view into a life of exploitation, whether working in a nail bar, growing cannabis or being used as a child criminal. We all know that those and other forms of exploitation went on and go on. It is entirely unacceptable.

That was why it was so important to get rid of the Jungle. It was why it was so important that the French authorities were pressed successfully into helping people to get away from Calais into refugee reception centres with food, shelter, water and sanitation, safe from the traffickers who would exploit them and treat them so shockingly.

Data Protection in the Areas of Police and Criminal Justice (EU Directive)

Debate between Andy Slaughter and Charlie Elphicke

Tuesday 24th April 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Slaughter]

I accept what the Minister has said—that the matter is at an early stage and we should not press him on those points. I am very happy to be patronised by the hon. Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley), and whether he is asking by himself or by proxy—

[Charlie Elphicke]

rose—

[Mr Slaughter]

Ah! His proxy also wishes to intervene.

[Charlie Elphicke]

I am proud to be the proxy for my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley), and I thank the hon. Gentleman for the generosity with which he has taken interventions and for the great courtesy that he brings to the House.

My concern is that we will end up with a free-of-cost subject access request. Does the hon. Gentleman agree with Tony Blair, who wrote in his book, “A Journey”, that freedom of information requests and such costless information requests are one of the biggest mistakes and that one should be very careful about them?

[Mr Slaughter]

I must get around to reading that book, because it is quoted to me so often in these debates and exactly the same point is made. I am sure it is a very good read.

I conclude by quoting one paragraph from the proposed directive which sums up its laudable intention:

“When personal data moves across borders it may put at increased risk the ability of individuals to exercise data protection rights to protect themselves from the unlawful use or disclosure of that data. At the same time, supervisory authorities may find that they are unable to pursue complaints or conduct investigations relating to the activities outside their borders. Their efforts to work together in the cross-border context may also be hampered by insufficient preventative or remedial powers, inconsistent legal regimes. Therefore, there is a need to promote closer co-operation among data protection supervisory authorities to help them exchange information with their foreign counterparts.”

That neatly encapsulates the two principal aims of the proposals, as set out in the impact assessment: dealing with the fragmentation of data, when it prevents cross-border law enforcement, and allowing individual citizens to control their personal data. Those are proper aspirations, and we are prepared to give the directive the benefit of doubt at this stage, but I do await with interest, as I always do, the rest of the debate and, indeed, the Minister’s response.