Refugees (Family Reunion) Bill [HL]

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 10th September 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Brinton (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady Ludford for presenting her Bill on family reunion for refugees and for her excellent introduction to it. I also thank Families Together and Safe Passage for their helpful briefings. It is an honour to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, whose advocacy for truly desperate people was so well evidenced in her speech.

In the late 1970s, I knew and was part of a team trying to help a woman doctor who had fled Chile after her husband, also a doctor, had disappeared and was killed by the Pinochet regime. There was no question at that time that her child might be able to escape with her, and I heard and saw the distress this caused her, especially because she knew that her child and her parents were also at risk because of the Pinochet regime’s vindictive nature. Eventually she was able to get her child to the UK because the then Government understood their responsibilities for the right for children to be with their families, and for their own safety.

Her experience mirrors the position that many refugees in the 21st century still face, but what has changed is the current Government’s approach to asylum and refugees, as my noble friend Lady Hamwee outlined. My husband chairs the Watford and Three Rivers Refugee Partnership. He knows of an Afghan refugee with leave to remain who has been in the UK for some time but whose now teenage children could not leave the country when he did. The grandparent who cared for them has died and the father is desperate for his children to be able to join him as they will be at particular risk from the Taliban. I agree with Caroline Nokes MP when she said:

“Our children do not suddenly become independent because they pass a day over their 18th birthday”.—[Official Report, Commons, 18/8/21; col. 1322.]


Nor does that birthday make them instantly safe in the country that their parent has had to flee for their life.

Recently the world’s focus has been on Afghanistan but, as other speakers have said, this is a widespread problem where tyrants rule with impunity. For hundreds of years, the UK has had a proud history of accepting refugees in fear of their lives, including the Huguenots, whose small children were thrown from windows of buildings in France; those from Hitler and Pinochet’s appalling regimes in the 20th century; and more recently those from Eritrea and Syria.

It is also vital that parents should be able to join their unaccompanied children who have been accepted as refugees. The UK’s argument that this would encourage more children to travel has been contested by experts in this area. UNHCR, the Refugee Council, Amnesty International and Save the Children all have evidence of how not reuniting unaccompanied children causes anxiety, constant fear and, not surprisingly, mental health problems that will last their lifetimes. I absolutely support the provision of legal aid being available for family reunion, not least because the exceptional case funding rates are inappropriately low for these cases.

Finally, this Bill is tackling one of the inequities proposed in the Nationality and Borders Bill. How someone fleeing for their lives, making for a safe country where they have contacts, should be judged on their eligibility as a refugee only on the route they have taken is outrageous. It contravenes international protection rules and is a severe backwards step for family reunion rights.

I will try to end on a positive note. Despite the proposals of the Nationality and Borders Bill, the way the Government have recently accepted those fleeing Afghanistan for their safety because of their links with the UK has meant that some families have arrived and others hope to join. In doing that, the Government have shown that they understand their moral duty to asylum seekers and family reunion. Accepting this Bill would be a major step in acknowledging that refugees seeking asylum from across the world have a right to be with their immediate families, and I hope that the Government will support it.