FIFA World Cup 2022

Debate between Bambos Charalambous and David Mundell

Thursday 20th October 2022 Westminster Hall

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I wish to thank the right hon. Member for Vale of Glamorgan (Alun Cairns) for securing this very important debate. I know that people in Enfield, Southgate and across the country are looking forward to next month’s World cup and I am no different. I will be cheering on England and hoping that Wales do well too. I live in hope that the tournament is as successful—if not more—for the three lions as in 2018, when we reached the semi-finals and the Southgate tube station in my constituency was temporarily renamed to pay tribute to Gareth Southgate. I will be the first to lobby Transport for London for the same treatment if we bring football home in December.

Of course, this is no ordinary tournament. It cannot be business as usual for the UK Government as we prepare for the tournament next month. We cannot avert our eyes from the problems in Qatar and the controversies surrounding its bid to host the 2022 World cup. On this side of the House, we will not be attending the tournament in person. I have received invitations, as I know other colleagues have, but to be clear, we will watch the World cup but will not be going. Dozens of construction workers have been killed putting this tournament on, and it is our view that we would be doing them a huge disservice if we turned a blind eye and did not use the World cup to campaign for stronger workers’ rights internationally, especially for migrant workers.

The eyes of the world will be firmly fixed on Qatar over the next few months and that provides us all with an opportunity to shine a light on the situation in the country and across the region. It is right that Qatar has faced intense criticism from human rights groups, international trade unions and labour organisations over the treatment of migrant workers. The Guardian newspaper reported in 2021 that 6,500 migrant workers from India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka had died in Qatar since 2010. The International Labour Organisation has said that 50 workers died and 500 were severely injured during 2020. There are also serious concerns about the kafala system, which requires workers to have the permission of their employers to change jobs, leave the country and renew residency permits allowing them to work and live in Qatar. By its nature, it gives employers substantial power and clearly leads to the exploitation of workers.

There are other issues surrounding delayed or reduced salaries, which put workers at risk of forced labour. There are barriers to obtaining justice for abuses, and the prohibition of migrant workers from trade unions. However, it is true that Qatar has made progress and we welcome the improvements that have been made on workers’ rights, including steps to dismantle the kafala system in 2020 with the introduction of new labour laws, meaning migrant workers no longer need their employer’s permission before changing jobs.

In 2021, Qatar became the first country in the Gulf to implement a minimum wage for workers, regardless of nationality or occupation. Reforms have also ensured protection from heat stress, and there have been efforts to enable the right to organise and discuss grievances with employers, but we remain concerned about the implementation of those reforms. Human rights organisations are still worried about the imbalance between employers and workers in Qatar, with reports that many migrant workers still fear lodging complaints.

Although steps have been taken to dismantle the kafala system, workers continue to face challenges in changing jobs, with 100,000 requests to change jobs between October 2020 and October 2021 rejected. It is clear that while progress has been made, the work cannot stop here. Indeed, as the tournament nears and there is less construction work, the wellbeing of workers in other areas of the economy is also of concern, including the hospitality and service industries, such as those working in hotels, security workers, cleaners, drivers and cooks.

More widely, we know that migrant workers have faced exploitation in Qatar, and there is real fear that the situation will worsen significantly as the world and the World cup move on. Progress cannot stop when the spotlight of the World cup ends in December. Next month’s World cup means that the LGBTQ+ fans in my constituency and across England and Wales face the grim prospect of putting up with the tournament being played in a country where their sexuality is criminalised.

[David Mundell]

I hear what the hon. Gentleman is saying, but does he not agree with me that there are serious issues with professional football here in the United Kingdom in respect of accepting people like me from the LGBT+ community? There are many issues to be dealt with in football more widely, rather than simply just the situation in Qatar.

[Bambos Charalambous]

The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. There are issues within our own game with footballers coming out as gay or LGBTQ+. That is an issue for sport across the UK and beyond. However, the point I am making is about supporters and the experience that they might have in Qatar, where it is a criminal offence to be gay. There are nuances in that, but I take the point and we need to do a lot more with the UK game to make sure that professional footballers and other sportsmen and women feel confident and able to come out.

On sexuality being criminalised, it is not fair and it is not right. Football is for everyone and fans should not fear that they cannot support their team freely and be who they are. We should show pride in making that point at the World cup. As previously, it will be our footballers leading from the front. In Qatar they face a tournament underscored by human rights. It is great that England and Wales, alongside the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany and Switzerland will join together and support the OneLove campaign during the World cup, symbolised by a distinctive OneLove armband worn by the team captains during the tournament.

For LGBTQ+ fans, the Foreign Office must continue to engage with Qatari officials to ensure that their safety is of paramount importance and that there are clear reassurances that it is safe for LGBTQ+ fans to visit the World cup. Unfortunately, I know that the majority of England and Wales LGBTQ+ fans will simply stay away from the tournament due to serious concerns about their safety.

More widely, it is vital that the UK continues to push for human rights to be upheld for all citizens, irrespective of their gender, sexuality, religion or other belief. That is not just an issue in Qatar; it is an issue across the region and it is important that we continue to raise concerns where possible. Standing up for human rights should be a fundamental tenet of our foreign policy. The UK and Qatar continue to enjoy a longstanding and productive relationship in defence, gas and other industries, as the right hon. Member for Vale of Glamorgan eloquently described in his speech. We must use that relationship to ensure that difficult questions are asked and those important issues are always on the agenda.

I ask the Minister what efforts the UK has taken, and continues to take, to hold the Qatari Government to account following the deaths and ill treatment of migrant workers in Qatar? Will the Minister commit to ensure the progress that has been made in Qatar is not forgotten when the tournament ends in December? There must be a legacy of scrutiny from the World cup. Finally, on the issue of LGBTQ+ rights, will the Minister outline the support that has been provided for fans travelling to Qatar for the World cup? Will he ensure that the concerns of the LGBTQ+ fans are raised with his counterparts in Qatar?

Football has unique way of bringing people together. We saw that over the summer with the lionesses and the Euro championships in England. I am sure that we will see that again during the World cup in Qatar. Amid all the football that will come our way next month, we cannot pretend it is a typical tournament. We must continue to raise our concerns; they are the things that we cannot celebrate in Qatar.

Delays in the Asylum System

Debate between Bambos Charalambous and David Mundell

Wednesday 7th July 2021 Westminster Hall

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Mundell. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stockport (Navendu Mishra) on securing this timely and important debate, his excellent speech and his commitment to raising the serious issue of delays and the myriad of associated problems with the asylum system.

Many people, myself included, are proud of the British values of fairness and decency. Those values underpin our shared sense that people in the UK will get a fair hearing, backed up by the rule of law. However, chronic delays in the asylum system are undermining and eroding those values, causing human suffering and creating a system that is unfair and chaotic. There is copious evidence of this in the “Living in Limbo” report, published by the Refugee Council earlier this month, and referred to by hon. Members throughout the debate.

The Minister should be alarmed and appalled by its findings. The raw data obtained from the Home Office via freedom of information requests are truly shocking. The data make it crystal clear that delays in the asylum system are endemic and have got worse and worse over the last decade. If the asylum system were a hospital patient, it would be in intensive care on a life support machine with a prognosis of a slow but terminal decline. The facts speak for themselves. The hon. Members for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) made compelling cases illustrating the Government’s failures via the data. More than 30,000 people are currently waiting between one and three years for an initial decision—in 2013 this was only 4,500 people—and 6,388 of those in 2020 were children, which is a tenfold increase since 2012.

The data and the facts say one thing, but the decision to propel myths about asylum seekers is a cruel and politically calculated choice by the Government. Instead of blaming the people, the Government should hold up the mirror to themselves to address the actual problems they have caused by refusing to fix the broken asylum system. Even more staggering is that at the end of March, over 66,000 people were waiting for an initial decision from the Home Office—more than will watch England at Wembley tonight. That is the highest number in over a decade and a truly shocking state of affairs.

The statistics are shocking enough, but the human cost of the delays is even worse. I am talking about people—many of them children—whose trauma of lived experience is compounded by being left in limbo in the asylum system, in many case for years on end. My hon. Friends the Members for Edmonton (Kate Osamor), for Salford and Eccles (Rebecca Long Bailey), for Vauxhall (Florence Eshalomi) and for Liverpool, Riverside (Kim Johnson), my right hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) and the hon. Member for Leicester East (Claudia Webbe) gave examples of worrying cases of constituents who have been caught up in the asylum system and whose cases are unresolved. I have an example of constituent F who came to the UK from Afghanistan as a child and applied for asylum in August 2013. It took seven and a half years, and my involvement as his MP, for the matter to be resolved this February. As the SNP spokesperson, the hon. Member for Glasgow North (Patrick Grady) said, it should not take an MP’s intervention to resolve such problems: it is not good enough. The impact on the mental health and wellbeing of people in this position is devastating.

During the time before a decision is made, people live on just £5 a day and are not permitted to work. People awaiting a decision are accommodated within a system that was not designed to be used for the long term. People are becoming increasingly mentally unwell as the years of uncertainty, trauma and demonisation erode their mental and physical health. The Refugee Council reported that this has led to an increase in the numbers of individuals self-harming and reporting suicidal thoughts. We heard of the appalling situation for the constituent of my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Paula Barker), which is really concerning. The Children’s Society report “Distress Signals” also outlines serious concerns about the damage done to children’s mental health in those conditions—damage done at a formative age that will last a lifetime.

As a lawyer, I am fond of the axiom that justice delayed is justice denied. Those cases, where people are placed in limbo, is justice denied on a vast scale. Beyond the human cost of these delays is the financial cost. The backlog adds considerably to the overall cost of the asylum process. My hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, Southall (Mr Sharma) spoke about the cost and failure of the asylum system. The Refugee Council has calculated that, for every month of delay, the additional cost to the Home Office per person is at least £730.41, equating to £8,765 per year. Therefore, the total cost per year of the current backlog of people awaiting an initial decision for more than six months is estimated to be approximately £220 million. The delays make absolutely no financial sense. What is clear is that the Home Office needs to get a grip of why it is that staffing increases have not helped to reduce the unacceptable delays and backlog.

What further concerns me is the fact that the Government appear to have very little by way of a plan to solve the backlog issue. For instance, the Government’s Nationality and Borders Bill, published yesterday, contains no measures for tackling the backlog. The Government’s desire to define safe and legal routes in an increasingly narrow way while criminalising irregular routes will do nothing to help with the backlog. The measures are likely to make delays in the system far worse, because the inadmissibility proposals will result in more people having to wait six months before their claims are even looked at.

Rather than chasing headlines through the draconian measures outlined in the Nationality and Borders Bill, there are practical steps the Government could take to make the asylum system function in an effective, fair and humane way. Some actions could be taken straightaway to tackle the unacceptable delays in the system, which cost so much in terms of both human suffering and public money. In February 2021 the UNHCR outlined proposals that would address the current backlog and prevent future ones from building up. Those proposals include introducing an effective case prioritisation system and introducing simplified asylum case processing procedures.

I also urge the Government to stop the increased pressure on our judicial system by ensuring that there is better decision making at the outset, with fair, quick decision-making processes instead of processes that drag on and leave lives in limbo. The Government must look at the proposals seriously and not repeat the mistakes of the past. Only by making concrete change to the system will they enable it to be effective, fair and humane. That, I believe, is what everyone wants to see. We must reflect on what the Government’s plan would mean for Britain as a society: I do not want to see our British values of decency and humanity eroded.

The end of this month, 28 July, marks the 70th anniversary of the refugee convention. In the aftermath of the second world war, in a shattered Europe, Britain came together with 26 other countries to form a strong foundation and create the convention. That is true British pride and patriotism, and a historical legacy. Almost 70 years later to the day, the UK Government are seeking to step back from that agreement. That is the sobering reality, and one of the many social and political impacts of the Government’s proposals.

We can look back on how we treat people seeking sanctuary here today with pride, or we can look back on this time as one that could and should have been much better. The humane treatment of those seeking sanctuary is as much about us rescuing our own values as it is about rescuing people in need. The Government must not delay in dealing with this issue.

[David Mundell (in the Chair)]

Thank you very much. I now call the Minister, Chris Philp. Please be mindful that Mr Mishra will have a few moments at the end to wind up the debate.