Business of the House

Christine Jardine Excerpts

Thursday 26th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Andrea Leadsom]

I, too, saw today’s report and share the hon. Gentleman’s concern. It does look alarming, and I am sure that he will find a way to raise it with Ministers.

[Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)]

I am currently pursuing a meeting with a Minister on the case of my constituent, an Iraqi-born Kurd, who was granted British citizenship in 2009. He is currently trying to get his one-year-old daughter out of a war zone around Erbil where she was born during a visit home by my constituent and his wife. The issues he is facing—the problems with paperwork and the impossibility, it seems at times, of moving the case forwards—prompts me to ask whether we can have a debate in this Chamber about how we are helping families who are torn apart by war and who come here for sanctuary but have to leave family members at home. What are we are doing and how are we working to reunite them?

[Andrea Leadsom]

I am incredibly sympathetic to the hon. Lady’s point. She is absolutely right to stand up for her constituent. We all, as constituency MPs, have cases where procedures seem to get in the way. I encourage her to write to me, so that I can take it up with the Home Office, or she can take it up directly with Ministers herself.