Refugees (Family Reunion) Bill [HL]

Baroness Lister of Burtersett Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 11th May 2018 Lords Chamber

I am pleased that the noble Lord accepts the premise of the Bill that families belong together and that our country has a moral duty to recognise them. Accepting the thrust of the Bill and in the light of what I hope he will read as reassurances, I hope that he will accept that the amendment would not be appropriate.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, I oppose the amendment, which has already been ably opposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee. I apologise that I could not be here on Second Reading, because I strongly support the Bill. The noble Baroness spoke about the importance of family reunion to integration. I was a member of the inquiry set up by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Refugees into integration, and I shall say a little about what we found, because I think it is relevant as we discuss the amendment.

The evidence that we received from a wide range of organisations underlined the psychological impact. Here I am talking particularly about the psychological impact on minors who are not allowed to bring any family into the country. Then there are refugees who are here, who have families still in conflict areas or who are still at risk, who are worried sick about what is happening to their families. On the children not allowed to reunite with parents and siblings, Coram Children’s Legal Centre said that it would continue the trauma and suffering of separation and loss. A number of people brought home to us the general impact on integration—that barriers to family reunion create barriers to integration. It is in all our interests that refugees are able fully to integrate into our society. In our findings and recommendations, we argued that,

“successfully being reunited with family members is an important step in helping refugees to integrate”.

We also argued that,

“the definition of family in the Immigration Rules remains very restrictive. Additionally, the lack of family reunion rights for unaccompanied children is a barrier to their successful integration”.

We recommended that they should be allowed to sponsor parents and siblings.

The noble Lord, Lord Marlesford, spoke about statistics and numbers, but we are talking about people. The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, rightly said that we were not talking about immigrants—although, of course, migrants are also people. We are talking about refugees, and she gave some very pertinent potential examples. I ask the noble Lord, Lord Marlesford, to think back to when he was an adolescent and put himself in their shoes—a young man who has left his country, for whatever reason, as a refugee. He is here in a strange country, his parents are still in danger, and he has two younger siblings, also in danger. How would he make the choice? Surely, to be asked to make a choice like that as a young person would just increase the psychological suffering. Whoever you chose, you would feel that you had left behind your mother, father, brother or sister, and you would live with the consequences. You would feel guilty about the people you had left behind, rather than those you had been able to bring in. That would increase the psychological trauma and suffering for these young people. We have to try to put ourselves in the shoes of people who are in a really difficult situation. To ask a young person in particular—but anyone, actually—to make that kind of choice about their family as to who they would save or not save is inhumane and cruel.

[The Earl of Listowel (CB)]

I speak in support of the Bill and against the amendment. I recognise the concerns that the noble Lord, Lord Marlesford, has raised about pressures on public services, but these children will be in care, so they will need a foster carer or perhaps be in a children’s home. If they have a family member with them, the public purse will benefit in that regard.

From a humane point of view, I worked in a hostel once a week over a period of time and saw a young girl from Afghanistan, and she was always quiet and depressed. She spoke no English—she spoke only a very limited dialect of her language, and the only other speaker was somewhere way off in the East End, so she was very isolated. One evening I arrived and she was in tears, because she had had news that the town that her parents lived in was being shelled, and she was concerned about them. The examples given about the hardship and emotional trauma for these young people ring very true to me. Simply from a humane point of view, anything that can be done to reunite these children and young people with their parents has to be welcomed, so I support the Bill.