Refugees (Family Reunion) Bill [HL]

Baroness Butler-Sloss Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 18th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as vice- chairman of the Human Trafficking Foundation.

Unaccompanied refugee children, the subject of the Bill, are not well cared for in this country. There are many dangers for all of them. There is a particular danger for a certain group of the children about which we should all be very concerned: the possibility of being exploited and trafficked. This is not a vain concern; it happens, and that is what the Government need to recognise. Between 2021 and 2024, such children were being placed in asylum hotels, and 440 children disappeared, 132 of whom have not yet been found. Where are they? Almost certainly they have been trafficked.

There is very little help at the moment. Asylum hotels are not used, and local authorities are expected to take over the children. Anyone who reads the news knows that Kent is completely overwhelmed and unable to deal with the children who flow into its care. It cannot look after them. These are all unaccompanied refugee children.

There is what is called a national transfer scheme, but it is utterly inefficient. Children are not kept track of. Independent child trafficking guardians—something Lord Field put forward in the report of 2019, with which I was involved and which, thank goodness, the previous Government took on board—do not look after refugee children. They look after them in Scotland, so why on earth do they not look after them in this country? There are not so many such children that there could not be guardians to do it. In Scotland that is done extremely efficiently; not everything in Scotland is, but that certainly is.

The previous Government had a series of adverse High Court decisions that it would be illuminating for the present Government to read. These children need families, not care homes. It would save a lot of money if the present Government looked at the cost to the country of the care of each individual child.

This is a situation that is drifting. The Bill is timely, welcome and important. Not only should this Government listen; they should act.

Refugees (Family Reunion) Bill [HL]

Baroness Butler-Sloss Excerpts

Committee stage
Friday 17th January 2025 Lords Chamber

I support the amendments proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, in so far as they are an alternative to mine. Having said all that, I beg to move.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

I ask the noble Lord, who I think has also put forward Amendment 14, whether children who have been formally adopted are contained within the Immigration Rules?

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

Appendix FM, as I understand it—although I would have to check—does allow for an application to be considered by the Home Office in respect of a formally adopted child. But I am sure the Minister can confirm, or otherwise, in relation to that.

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[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

No. The previous Government actually encouraged the small boats. They encouraged people to come by routes that were not safe.

The Green Party supports this Bill. It is time to remove the barriers so that desperate children can be reunited with their families in safety.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, I declare that I—along with Fiona Mactaggart, then an MP—wrote a report on children in northern France, Calais and Dunkirk some years ago. I find this whole group of amendments to the Bill extremely sad.

I want to concentrate on a legal issue, which I raise to some extent with the noble Lord, Lord Murray. I was certainly not an immigration lawyer but, as far as I understand the Immigration Rules, civil partners, who come up in Amendment 13, and adopted children, who come up in Amendment 14—both are referred to in Clause 1(5)—are already within the Immigration Rules. Consequently, if the noble Lord and the noble Baroness are right, they are trying to reduce the Immigration Rules, not increase them.

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine (CB)]

My Lords, I was unable to attend Second Reading, but I have come in today especially because this debate is a very interesting one. I say to those who really want to hear a well-argued and well-reasoned debate that it is the convention of this House that, when someone seeks to intervene with a point and they ask the speaker to give way, that person should be heard. It is very sad to see the tone of this debate.