Refugee Family Reunion

Bob Stewart Excerpts

Thursday 21st June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Neil O'Brien]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. I have heard that argument, which is an intriguing one. It would be a big step to do anything that suggested those people would be able to work in this country, so we should be very careful when we think about it. However, I understand the argument that, if people have to wait a very long time, perhaps something about their treatment should change at that point.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

I support everything that has just been said. However, there is a real problem with identifying people and it has to be clear. I have been dealing with people who claim to be someone they are not. The danger is that you will get the wrong person and the wrong country. So it is very important to ascertain the facts. That is the reason it takes so long. I agree it should be speeded up, but that is the reason.

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[Kwasi Kwarteng]

The right hon. Gentleman makes a crucial point: this phenomenon of migration and the political uncertainty and instability are not just going to go away. In fact, if we look forward, we are probably going to have greater pressures and greater numbers of people coming from sub-Saharan Africa and the middle east.

[Bob Stewart]

I thank my very good friend for allowing me to intervene on him. He cites migrants in Libya. I have not been to Libya, so I bow to my hon. Friend’s greater authority on the matter, but are those migrants refugees from other parts of Africa or displaced persons from within Libya, or are they economic migrants? It seems to me that they might be a mix of everything.

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

My hon. Friend—my very good friend—is absolutely right, and that shows how complicated and variegated the problem is. In Libya, there are all three: economic migrants, people from sub-Saharan Africa fleeing real persecution outside Libya, and people who are being mercilessly trafficked for gain. It is a complicated picture and it is not easy to say which is which. In some instances, an individual or family might have two or three different reasons why they should leave their home or why they were forced out of their home. It is not particularly helpful to come to this question with a simple, preconceived notion of what a refugee is, what an economic migrant is or what someone who is being trafficked is, because the real world is a lot more complicated than that. We cannot simply put people, families and children in such neatly defined silos. We have to be much more flexible in our approach.

The hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar stressed how Britain is very welcoming, but he also mentioned the fact that the climate has been hostile in many instances, particularly in respect of tabloid newspapers. I am not someone openly to praise tabloid newspapers in this country—they have many strengths and many weaknesses—but it is easy in this House to pour scorn on what used to be called the popular press. The tabloids respond to the very real concerns of people throughout the country. If I speak to my constituents in Spelthorne, they express extremely generous sentiments towards genuine refugees, but there is also genuine concern that Britain’s hospitality and generosity can be abused, and it can be abused by some of the unscrupulous traffickers we talked about.

I wish to talk a little more about trafficking, because it is a problem that perhaps absorbs too little attention in this House. I was in Libya a year ago, when I was told that an individual needs to pay $1,000 to be transported from Libya to, in the first instance, Italy, which is the most common country of destination for these migrants. It does not take a mathematician to work out that if each person pays $1,000 to be trafficked, or transported, and there are—I was told—up to something like 1,000 migrants a day in the high season, when trafficking is at its peak the business of trafficking is potentially worth around $1 million a day. Such a huge amount of money that is potentially being distributed, or is part of the revenues of this business, attracts all kinds of people. When I was there, people talked about the Sicilian mafia, various eastern European mafiosi and the Russian mafia. Lots and lots of unscrupulous people are involved in this terrible trafficking.

We must look not only at the political instability and the relative disturbances in sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere, but at the sources of the trafficking. We must clamp down on the criminal activities of these gangs, because they are the people who are driving this trade. As the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) suggested, this is a problem that will not go away. I assure the House that, if it does not go away, there will be unscrupulous gangs and criminal elements all over this trafficking and this way of making money. If that is the case, any European Government will have to focus much more closely on stopping the criminality.

When we talk about refugees, we understand the humanitarian concerns of our constituents, but there is another side to this issue. I see the hon. Member for Leeds North West (Alex Sobel) shaking his head, but we cannot simply stick our heads in the sand and ignore this terrible trade.

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[Kwasi Kwarteng]

The right hon. Gentleman is right that, clearly, criminals are not, in the first instance, driving this issue. There are many social, political and economic reasons for this phenomenon but, certainly in the parts of Libya that I saw and in the migrant camps in Sicily where I talked to a few people who were unlucky enough to be trafficked, a big criminal enterprise underpins it. It is very easy in the Chamber of the House of Commons to focus on the humanitarian aspects and to remind Members of our obligations not only as MPs but as citizens and human beings to very vulnerable people. I completely accept that. It is too easy for people in this Chamber to turn a blind eye to what is actually going on from the economic and criminal point of view, which is, frankly, a scandal. Too little of our political debate focuses on these wicked criminal elements. We must take a much bigger view.

[Bob Stewart]

I ask my very good friend to forgive me for intervening a second time. I have had to deal with the mafia in the Balkans. It may be foreign-owned or run, but it uses local people. I am quite sure that, in Libya, the mafia to whom he is referring will often be Libyans who are actually working for foreigners. That makes it even more complicated.