Nationality and Borders Bill (First sitting)

Anne McLaughlin Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 21st September 2021 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

I will call Ms McLaughlin, then the Minister, and then we will see how we are doing for time.

[Anne McLaughlin (Glasgow North East) (SNP)]

Q The British Red Cross is part of the International Red Cross, so perhaps it has a clearer picture of the scale of the global crisis that is leading to the displacement of people. The Bill is apparently partly a response to the number of people seeking asylum and refugees that the UK is taking. You said a moment ago that we should be able to take the number we have at the moment. The UK Government’s argument is that we are taking proportionately higher than most other countries. Is that correct? Are the Government right to be concerned enough about the proportionally higher numbers that the UK is taking to bring in this legislation?

Jon Featonby: As you rightly say, the British Red Cross is part of the Red Cross and Red Crescent global movement of 190 national societies around the world. Working with our international partners gives us that insight into what is happening globally.

We know that 75% of refugees are hosted by countries that border the ones that they fled, and 85% of refugees are hosted by some of the poorest countries in the world, so it is absolutely the case that most people who are displaced from their own countries stay within their regions. Almost everybody we work with wants to be able to return home at some point, which is why they stay as close to their home as they can for as long as possible. One of the other trends we have seen over the past decade is that the situations that produce refugees are lasting for longer, which means that people are living in those other countries for longer. That potentially results in more people looking to move on in order to be able to rebuild their lives.

The UK has about 35,000 to 40,000 asylum applications a year at the moment. Compared with other European countries, that puts us 17th in the number of applications per capita. We are fourth overall for the past year. Germany received four times as many asylum applications as the UK did last year. France received three times as many and Spain received twice as many.

[Anne McLaughlin]

Q That is interesting. If I have time for one more question, I want to mention the concerns that have been raised about aspects of the Bill that are not compliant with some of the UK’s international obligations—the refugee convention is one, but there are many of them. There is a huge debate; one commentator says, “It doesn’t comply,” and the Government say, “Yes, it does comply.” Do you share those concerns? If so, is it possible to amend the Bill so that the UK is not defying international obligations?

Jon Featonby: We are aware of that debate going on. I am also aware that the Committee is taking evidence from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees later in the week, which is, compared with the Red Cross, in a far better place to make comments on that.

From our point of view, that debate will probably rage on through the course of the Bill’s passage and after it becomes law, but it is important to remember where the idea of the refugee convention comes from. We can have a debate about article X or article Y of the convention and how this legislation fits or does not fit with them, but the convention was obviously born out of what happened during the second world war and built on international agreements before that. It is largely predicated on the idea that no one country can respond to global displacement on its own. To be able to do that and make sure the people who are displaced receive the protection they need, there needs to be an international framework based on solidarity and co-operation, and that is absolutely what the convention is part of. Obviously, the UK played a key role in its drafting.

One of our concerns about what is in the Bill, particularly around inadmissibility rules and reducing access to the UK’s protection system, is that what the UK says and does matters, so other countries look to the UK and take a lead from it. There is a potential negative impact. If the UK says, “We don’t believe that these people should be claiming asylum here”—not making a decision on their protection needs but just saying, “These people are inadmissible to our rules”—and they get pushed back to France, France could be within its rights to do the same, and you end up with a domino effect.

To return to what is happening in Afghanistan at the moment, one of the international community’s primary objectives should be to make sure that the countries bordering Afghanistan continue to keep their borders open so that the people who need to escape Afghanistan can do so. We saw that with the Syrian crisis and the role that Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan, in particular, played in the region. There is the danger that if countries such as the UK prevent access to their protection system, some of those countries can—almost quite rightly—turn around and say, “Why should we continue to keep our borders open?”

Rather than getting into the ins and outs of the convention, we believe that it is important for the UK to continue to show that leadership by offering protection, whether through the resettlement programmes, which are absolutely among the world’s best, or through continued access to a protection system and the asylum system in the UK.

[Anne McLaughlin]

That is really helpful. Thank you.

[The Chair]

I will now call the Minister. Mr Anderson, if there is time after we hear from the Minister, we will try to fit you in.