Refugees (Family Reunion) Bill [HL]

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 10th September 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I support the Bill and congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, on introducing it. It is, as she said, incredibly timely, and I hope we will all work together later when other, much less attractive Bills come to this House.

Obviously, being the last Back-Bench speaker, I am going to have to cross out quite a lot of my speech, and I hope that some of the things I say will not go against any of our House of Lords procedures—which, of course, they might. I think this Bill is very sensible, and sensible is very high praise in my lexicon. It has a sense of family at its heart and of course Greens would automatically support this. Anyone with empathy and humanity will have sympathy with its aims, and the Bill is consistent with the Government’s stated intention of strengthening safe routes for those seeking protection in the UK. It is a shame that little else the Government do is consistent with the aim of reducing dangerous, irregular journeys.

This Government have grovelled before the worst elements of the British psyche—the racists, the bigots, the haters—and it really does the rest of us no credit. It brings shame on those of us who want to be decent human beings. This Government have behaved appallingly over the past 11 years but particularly on the issue of refugees. Our Government’s “hostile environment” can take most of the blame for the fact that we have left people behind in Afghanistan. I do not understand why we have an asylum regime that deliberately erects barriers and unnecessary bureaucracy every step of the way. Even before the fall of Kabul, the number of refugees who had been waiting more than a year had grown to more than 50,000. And what will now happen to the 3,200 people? As has been said, we cannot possibly send them back. Plus, of course, we have a lot of brave women protesting in Afghanistan, campaigning for their human rights very bravely, and they deserve every drop of respect, solidarity and support we can muster. If they have to flee Afghanistan, our doors really should be open, because we helped create a set of circumstances where women could express themselves and could find more freedom, and now they will suffer for it.

I do not understand why we have not had the time or resources to answer the multiple cries for help from people stranded behind the Taliban roadblocks. I think it is because we have put up our own roadblocks behind the desks in Whitehall; it seems that civil servants pick through details and create blocks that are not what the majority of British people would want.

When asked about supporting this Bill to reunite families, the Prime Minister replied that the Government would bring forward legislation to separate the legal from the illegal asylum seekers. No human is illegal. Seeking asylum is a human right. Do we really have criteria that exclude an interpreter or a cook who has worked for the British embassy for a decade, for example, merely because they were employed by a contractor rather than directly? Are they seen as some of the so-called illegals that our Prime Minister is talking about?

This Government are a disgrace. Their threats to break international law, whether it is maritime law or human rights legislation, are a disgrace to us all. I do not understand how they can do it without being utterly shamefaced. I am an atheist, but there is a phrase that applies to this: “There but for the grace of God go I”.