Unaccompanied Child Refugees: Europe

Bob Stewart Excerpts

Thursday 2nd November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Charlie Elphicke]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. That is the central point that I am just coming to.

It was right that we managed to get the Jungle dismantled. It was right that we got so many vulnerable people removed to safer places. It is also right that we have worked tirelessly, on an international basis—Britain, France and countries across Europe—to target the international criminal gangs: the trafficking gangs behind the evil trade of modern slavery and this wicked exploitation.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

I dealt with child refugees a long time ago and I have total sympathy for their plight. We have taken about 8,500 people into this country, about half of whom are children. Am I right to assume that all the people who come through that system are tracked, looked after and watched so that they do not just disappear into an underclass?

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[Adam Holloway]

Well, yes, I accept that, but we must be careful to do what is right for as many people as possible, rather than for the people who are most visible to us. We should not just do what makes us feel good. We must stop creating a “pull” for people to make these very long journeys.

[Bob Stewart]

My very good friend has lived under cover in Sangatte. Has he any comments on how the children were living there? In particular, can he tell us about the conditions that he saw when he was under cover?

[Adam Holloway]

I thank my hon. and gallant Friend for his intervention. The reality is that this was some time ago, and that there were very, very few children. What I found in my week-long stay at the Sangatte camp was that the refugees were mostly fit young men. I would do exactly as they did—they had sold bits of land in Kurdistan or wherever else and were coming to England. The reasons why that camp was full, why the Jungle camp was full and why there are thousands of people around Calais is that they know they will get into Britain. We have people drowning in the Mediterranean because we have created the pull factor: the expectation that if they make it to Europe, they will stay in Europe. Until we break that, we will continue to have this problem, and we will continue to have so many young people coming over here.

The reality with what we describe as these “refugee children”—I do acknowledge that we cannot have nine-year olds living in bushes—is that 90% of the unaccompanied asylum-seeking children who applied for asylum in 2016 were male, 59% of whom claimed to be either 16 or 17 years old.

--- Later in debate ---

[Victoria Atkins (Louth and Horncastle) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire (Heidi Allen) and the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) for calling this debate. It has been an interesting and, at times, difficult debate to listen to because we know the terrible cases we see in the middle east, Europe and here at home due to the terrible crises that have happened across the world. I was very moved by the experiences of my hon. Friend the Member for Gravesham (Adam Holloway), with his military expertise. I am sure that has helped to bring an extra dimension—[Interruption.] Sorry, I should have said my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Gravesham; my hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) is telling me off.

It has been a pleasure to listen to this debate because it has been a consensual debate on a consensual motion. The hon. Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown) was not perhaps so consensual in some of her remarks, but the debate has been consensual on the whole. I am pleased that the motion recognises that the United Kingdom has

“demonstrated moral and political leadership”,

and that it focuses on access to

“safe and legal means to reunite…family and relatives in EU”

with the hope that we will meet the standards of the Dublin III regulation. I am sure that the Minister has been listening carefully, and that this Government are entirely committed to ensuring that we continue to preserve that access and do our part in looking after the children of the world.

[Bob Stewart]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Victoria Atkins]

If my hon. Friend can make it very quick, as I am conscious that others want to speak.

[Bob Stewart]

I will be quick. Our country has done very well. We have taken in more people than any other European country, and we have most definitely brought far more people than any other country direct from the countries where they originated into this country, avoiding all these awful journeys.

[Victoria Atkins]

My hon. Friend has clearly read my notes because I was just about to move on to the other things on which we can agree. We can all agree that no one wants child—or, indeed, adult—refugees to fall victim to the serious organised crime gangs that run the people-trafficking rings, and we can all agree that we must target those criminal gangs, which are in it for profit and nothing more.

Surely we can all agree that children should receive the highest levels of care when they come to live in this country and we offer them a home. It was reported recently in the papers that children from Vietnam who have been taken into care as part of our refugee programme are going missing within hours or days of finding foster care. They are being tempted back out—or are sometimes physically taken back out—by criminal gangs in this country. We cannot and must not allow that to happen. We have to remember that we need to look after people properly when they come to our country. I am sure that we can also agree that expanding the vulnerable persons resettlement scheme from only Syria to all nationalities was good and entirely just.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham said, the UK’s record is significant. More than 8,500 people have been resettled so far, and about half of them are children. The United Kingdom resettled more refugees from outside Europe in 2016 than any other EU country. More than a third of all resettlement to the EU was to the UK that year. We should acknowledge that in the consensual terms of this debate.

I listened carefully to the intervention by the hon. Member for Walthamstow on my hon. Friend the Member for Gravesham about the expertise of Home Office officials. I completely understand where she was coming from in what she asked for, but Italy, France, Greece and other countries are sovereign countries, and my concern is that we cannot just roll into town, as it were, and take over their immigration systems. We have—I imagine the Minister will tell us this—to work very much in co-operation and partnership with them.