Unaccompanied Minors Seeking Asylum

Debate between Angela Crawley and Robert Jenrick

Tuesday 10th January 2023 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for Immigration (Robert Jenrick)]

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Lanark and Hamilton East (Angela Crawley) for securing the debate, and to my hon. Friend the Member for Clacton (Giles Watling) for his contribution. This is clearly an important subject, and I hope that in the time available I can respond to the points raised by both hon. Members.

It is important to underline that the UK has a proud record of providing protection and sanctuary to people who need it in accordance with our international obligations. Between 2015 and September of last year, we offered a place to almost 450,000 men, women and children who sought safety via safe and legal entry routes. They include people from Hong Kong, Syria, Afghanistan and Ukraine, as well as the family members of refugees. Last year, we offered more entry route opportunities than in any single year since the end of the second world war. Over the same period, the UK offered protection in the form of refugee status, humanitarian protection and alternative forms of leave via asylum applications to over 90,000 people, including dependants.

It is important to recognise the wider background to these matters. The Home Secretary and I have been very clear, repeatedly, about the challenges that we face as a country, some of which have been referenced by my hon. Friend the Member for Clacton. We should be under no illusion about the fact that the UK’s asylum system has been under immense strain and mounting pressure for several years, owing to the very large numbers of people crossing the channel illegally—principally, but not solely, in small boats. Last year, over 45,000 people arrived in clandestine boats. The journeys are facilitated by ruthless criminal gangs who are interested only in profiting from human misery. The tragic loss of life in the channel last month, to which the hon. Member for Lanark and Hamilton East referred, was the worst possible reminder of the dangers of the crossings, and underlines once more why it is so critical that we destroy the business model of the people smugglers.

That is why deterrence will be suffused through everything that we do as a Government, and why I disagree with the hon. Lady’s characterisation of our policy with regard to Rwanda. There is nothing compassionate about perpetuating a trade in people that risks the lives of thousands of individuals, including children, every year. That evil trade must be stopped, and we are taking concerted action to do so on a number of fronts, as my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister set out at the end of last year. That action includes deeper co-operation with our key partners, such as the French, as my hon. Friend the Member for Clacton set out.

[Angela Crawley]

If just one child is incorrectly defined as an adult because of this Government’s abhorrent policy—the Minister calls it a deterrence policy—on preventing criminal gangs, is that not one child too many who will fall through the cracks and be in further danger?

[Robert Jenrick]

I will come on in a moment to answer the hon. Lady’s questions about age verification, but I disagree that sending individuals to Rwanda, which has now been declared a safe country by the courts, is a policy that is uncompassionate or cruel. Quite the opposite is true.

We live in an age of mass migration. Millions of people wish to come to the United Kingdom. If we do nothing to deter people from coming to the UK, which I think is the position that the hon. Lady and her party suggest taking, we will find not 45,000 people crossing the channel, but hundreds of thousands of people doing so in the years and decades ahead. We have to respond to this issue as a country, as many other countries around the world are doing.

From the conversations that the Home Secretary, the Prime Minister and I have had with our European and international partners, it is clear that every developed country in the world is thinking carefully about how they can put in place procedures and policies that will prevent mass migration and deter individuals from making dangerous crossings or damaging their national sovereignty. Other European countries are looking to the work we are doing on Rwanda. We may see other European countries copy that policy and make agreements with third parties in the years ahead.

[Robert Jenrick]

We are looking at all models; I hope that hon. Members can see from the plans set out by the Prime Minister that this will be a campaign on several fronts. We are looking at every viable route in order to deter people from coming to the UK, to process applications as swiftly as possible, and to find better forms of accommodation when they are here. I know that my hon. Friend’s constituency has been on the sharp end of the situation regarding accommodation. Of course, we are talking to our international partners around the world, who are all grappling with the same challenge.

We are not an international outlier. The policies that we are enacting are those that are being enacted or considered by most other developed countries. The Prime Minister, through his recent conversations with President Macron, and the Home Secretary, through the Calais Group of northern European states, are working intensively and constructively with our partners to find common ways forward. The treaties that we are bound by, such as the refugee convention, were created for a different era, in the immediate aftermath of the second world war, prior to this period in which tens if not hundreds of millions of individuals are looking to travel around the world. It is in that context that we need to sharpen the deterrent we have as a country to make sure that we are not providing an easier route than our European neighbours, and are not a more compelling destination than our nearest neighbours, for those shopping for asylum or, particularly, for economic migrants.

I will answer the questions the hon. Lady has brought to my attention. The first point is about how we house individuals. It is important to say—I mean no disrespect to the hon. Lady, but this point needs to be made—that Scotland is bearing a lighter burden than other parts of the United Kingdom when it comes to refugees generally, and to those who are crossing the channel in small boats in particular. The same appears to be true with respect to children.

[Angela Crawley]

Will the Minister give way?

--- Later in debate ---

[Robert Jenrick]

I will in a moment. I know the hon. Lady feels passionately about ensuring that individuals are housed decently and compassionately, so the best thing that she and her colleagues could do is go to Scotland and speak to the Scottish Government and Scottish local authorities, and encourage them to adopt better policies, so that Scotland takes a fair and equitable number of those crossing the channel.

Before I give way, I want to give the statistics. The Scottish Government have nine hotels supporting asylum seekers, and five hotels supporting the Afghan cohort in the UK, which represents just 1.6% of the combined asylum and Afghan hotel population across the whole of the United Kingdom. There are small cities in England, such as Stoke-on-Trent, that have more hotels housing asylum seekers than the whole of Scotland. That is not fair and equitable. If the Scottish Government and members of the SNP want to play a full part in these debates and discussions, the best thing they could do is ensure that they played a greater part in this.

[Angela Crawley]

The Minister should be mindful when quoting statistics. It is somewhat misleading to suggest that, because Scotland is using fewer hotels, it is not adequately playing its part. Most local authorities in Scotland have more than stepped up to the plate. The use of selective statistics is very misleading and not great practice. Let us be honest: are not most hotels not suitable accommodation, temporary or otherwise, for individuals? It is therefore misleading to suggest that Scotland is not playing its part. There are many other ways in which we accommodate asylum seekers. [Interruption.]