European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill

Bambos Charalambous Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 2nd sitting: House of Commons & Committee: 2nd sitting
Wednesday 8th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Thangam Debbonaire]

That sounds like an eminently sensible idea.

The Opposition support the cross-party amendment, new clause 55, and I will come on to the other clauses. The Labour party has consistently proposed a solution to the possibility of Brexit causing a border either on the island of Ireland or in the Irish sea, and our customs union proposal would prevent both. There will be a chance to discuss that proposal later today, and the Government will have a chance to consider it. In the meantime, I ask them to consider amendment 1.

Clause 37 is an astonishing breach of faith with some of the most vulnerable children in the world. Our amendment 4, which we will push to a vote, seeks to restore that faith. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) and the noble Lord Dubs, our dear friend and colleague, have today written jointly to all Conservative Members to urge them to support amendment 4 and thereby scrap clause 37.

[Bambos Charalambous (Enfield, Southgate) (Lab)]

The UK has already reneged on its commitment to the 480 child refugees who were due to come to the UK from France under the Dubs scheme. This withdrawal agreement is a further regression of the UK’s moral duty to help vulnerable refugee children, so does my hon. Friend agree that amendment 4 would require the UK to show that it is serious about its humanitarian obligations?

[Thangam Debbonaire]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. This is about who we want to be as a country—who I believe the British people already are—and how we want to be seen. As Conservative Members will know, there is no mandate for this change. The change was not in their general election manifesto or in any statement of support for the withdrawal agreement of which I am aware, although they are welcome to contradict me. It is deeply wrong for the Government to seek to remove this provision on protecting vulnerable children just because they can.

I am sure that many Conservative Members are troubled by this, and I hope some are having words with their Whips right now. I know their constituents will be shocked by the breach of trust between the people of this country who, no matter who they voted for in December, believe that protecting vulnerable children is part of who we are as a country. Brexit or no Brexit, that is who we are.

I believe the Minister is an honourable man, and perhaps he will seek to remedy this breach of faith by not objecting to amendment 4, and thereby not put his MPs in an awkward position. We shall see.

Clause 37 removes the commitment to negotiate an agreement with the EU27 on protecting child refugees. If the Government will not back our amendment to change that, I hope they will explain it. The hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry) has already outlined much of the case, and I am grateful to her for supporting our amendment and for laying out the legal detail, as I am not as capable as her of doing so.

This commitment belongs within the Bill. The Government have said otherwise, but we believe it belongs here because, as well as keeping faith with the noble Lord Dubs and others both inside and outside Parliament, the existing provisions for the protection of children would then be the basis for negotiating an agreement. We must consider the fact that the clock is ticking; we leave the EU at the end of this month and we will then have only a few months more to agree the future relationship. The regulations that currently provide the legal basis for child refugees to be reunited with adult relatives will end if we do not put any other negotiated agreement in place in that time.

Surely, there can be no right hon. or hon. Member in this place who does not respect and admire the work of our colleague and friend Lord Dubs, who, with warmth and determination, eternal optimism and good faith, has campaigned, and inspired others to campaign, for us to do more, not less, for vulnerable child refugees travelling alone and trying to get to safety. Who among us can fail to recognise his extraordinary example and his achievements? I hope that I am wrong, but it would seem that, unfortunately, the Government do not recognise them. That is certainly Lord Dubs’s view and it is mine, too, because in clause 37 they have reneged on that commitment. More importantly, they have reneged on a commitment to child refugees themselves, to secure arrangements at the earliest opportunity on how to protect children elsewhere in the EU who have an adult relative legally in the UK, either with status or in the asylum process.

Family reunion is one of those things that should not need explaining, but apparently it does: families belong together. Families who are traumatised by war, persecution and conflict are often forced to make decisions that none of us would ever want to have to make. Sometimes, in their journeys to safety, they are separated, and we should be doing everything we can to help reunite them, wherever they are, because that is part of who we are as a country. The British Red Cross and other refugee organisations have recommended that clause 37 be removed and that the provision be restored, and the Government could do just that. They have said that there is no change of policy and that it is just not appropriate for this provision to be in this Bill—the Minister is nodding. Why should it not be in this Bill? It was in the October version. The provisions end this year and I have heard no whisper of any negotiations so far with the EU about this provision, although I am happy to be corrected if the Minister knows otherwise.

In numerous reports, such as the House of Lords European Union Committee report “Brexit: refugee protection and asylum policy” and the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee report “Responding to irregular migration: A diplomatic route”, the importance of providing safe and legal routes to protection has been noted. They point out, for example, that policies that focus

“exclusively on closing borders will drive migrants to take more dangerous routes, and push them into the hands of criminal groups.”

They have warned:

“In the absence of robust and accessible legal routes for seeking asylum in the UK, those with a claim are left with little choice but to make dangerous journeys by land and sea.”

The Government have rightly shown concern about people setting out on those dangerous journeys, but making it harder to come by legal routes is what prompts them. The Government recognise the need—I have heard them do this—to do more to prevent desperate and vulnerable people setting out in leaky boats and taking other dangerous routes, but this recognition is hollow words if it is not followed up with the action needed to increase safe and legal routes. The Minister will know, as I have pressed on this on many occasions, in different contexts and different debates, that refugee resettlement and refugee family reunion saves lives and prevents those dangerous journeys.

Clause 37 is worse than I have set out, as not only does it fail to increase our response, but it goes backwards. It risks going backwards because we have no commitment on what will happen and it is totally unnecessary. Let me set out some things the Government could choose to do and commit to right now. They could commit that family reunion rights will be protected, with priority afforded to unaccompanied children. They could tell us they will replace the family reunion elements of Dublin III by prioritising negotiation with the EU and with key member states so that there is an agreement that allows individuals who have claimed asylum to be reunited with their family members. The Government could commit to allowing children to join extended family members in the UK who have the legal right to be here because they are in a process or they already have status.

We hope that the Government and their Back Benchers will recognise the rightness of this cause and the moral justification for it. We hope that they understand that the people of the United Kingdom will want them to do this. We hope they will also join us in paying tribute to the many community organisations, volunteers, councillors and individuals who have shown our national values, and demonstrate them daily, by protecting, and offering to protect, still more vulnerable people. We hope the Government will acknowledge that and accept our amendment.

Finally, I come to the issue of parliamentary scrutiny. An extraordinary turn of affairs has occurred between versions 1 and 2 of this Bill: the Government have totally removed the process of parliamentary scrutiny over the negotiations for the future relationship with the EU. Our new clause 1 therefore seeks to restore this scrutiny. Do we want to leave the European Union just for the Government to be able to ride roughshod over the views of the democratically elected Members of this House of Commons, on our side and on the other? Do our constituents really want us to have less say, not more, over the relationship with our nearest neighbours? Did the people we represent really go to the polls on a dark, cold, rainy and windy day in December to elect us, on this side of the House and on that, so that we can simply agree to hand over power to the Executive on this, the single most important issue of our times? Is this really what “Get Brexit done” means?