EU Action Plan Against Migrant Smuggling (EUC Report)

Baroness Kidron Excerpts

Wednesday 15th June 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kidron (CB)]

Many noble Lords will recall the last weekend in May, when more than 700 refugees drowned in quick succession. It is in their memory that I wish to call on this Government to open up further safe and legal routes of migration as requested in this excellent report.

Desperate people do not make rational decisions. They take to unstable dinghies, put their families at risk and entrust their future to the hands of the unqualified, who may well have pure motives, or the unscrupulous, who do not. In either case, neither offers very good odds. The report we are debating expresses regret at the refusal of the UK Government to participate in EU relocation strategies, and it urges, both at UK and EU level, that more emphasis be put on establishing safe and legal routes of migration. Many noble Lords have called for community-based private sponsorship, medical evacuation, humanitarian visas, family reunion, academic scholarships and labour mobility schemes. Any one of these offers an orderly and controlled form of migration. Collectively they describe a minimum human response to desperate neighbours.

The arguments against such mechanisms were also captured in the report. It is suggested that the number of beneficiaries would be so few in relation to potential refugees that it is not worth it. There is a fear that these routes would expose us to terrorist threat, and that establishing such routes would act as a pull factor.

These are poor arguments. The fact that we can do little is a wholly inadequate reason for refusing to do what we can. In spite of intelligence from Europol, it is simply the case that people are coming in in this way, those intent on doing harm will do so by any means, and they do not need the sanction of formal status to do so. The bloodshed in Syria and the conflict in failed states within the Middle East and north Africa are driving millions to flee. They are not being pulled. They are being pushed. Even those in the relative security of refugee camps face decades in limbo, in circumstances that do not offer a life with prospects or dignity.

All this is not just about what is right for those fleeing. This is about what is right for us. This is the country that gave refuge to my parents, Michael and Nina, the children of Samuel, Ruchel, Soloman and Maternal, who themselves had been given serial refuge both as children and as adults—five countries in just three generations, three generations that survived and prospered, unlike so many of their friends and family because they were given repeatedly safe and legal routes of migration until my siblings and I were born in the safety and security of the United Kingdom.

The philosopher Peter Singer famously asks: “If you had just bought a beautiful pair of shoes and saw a child drowning in a shallow pond, would you save your shoes or save the child?”. Unanimously, people answer, “Save the child”. He goes on: “If there are others present, would you still save the child?”. Invariably, the answer is yes. People recognise that their obligations belong to them, irrespective of the obligations of others. Finally, he asks: “What if the child were far away, perhaps in another country, but it remains equally within your means to save them at no great danger to yourself?”. Virtually all agree that distance and nationality make no difference to one’s obligations.

Her Majesty’s Government talk of solving the problem “upstream”, yet upstream we have problems of great magnitude, poetically described by the right reverend Prelate—proxy wars, climate change, unequal distribution of global wealth, food scarcity, conflicts, failed states and terror. And we have no expectation that those problems will be resolved very soon. That leaves us, I am afraid, with Peter Singer’s challenge: do we let people drown because they are out of our sight?

The safe and legal routes proposed describe an achievable lifeline for a human being in desperate need. They undermine smugglers, give hope and choice in the intractable lives of those forcibly on the move, and allow us the privilege of not standing by, dehumanised by our inaction.

I had hoped to say the names of the dead, just as we do for those who perished in 9/11, 7/7 and Hillsborough, and just as we do for fallen soldiers or indeed Members of your Lordships’ House when they pass away—we name our dead to honour their memory—but in spite of considerable effort, no one could provide me with names. The final indignity of the desperate is that they are a number, not a name. But I can remind the House of three year-old Alan Kurdi, who washed up on a beach last year, and the outpouring of compassion that accompanied that young child’s death. It is in his name that I ask Her Majesty’s Government to reflect the long-standing values, compassion and leadership that my family benefited from and open up new, safe and legal routes to the UK and, in doing so, offer safety to the few—too few perhaps—but dignity to us all.