Refugees (Family Reunion) (No.2) Bill

David Warburton Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons
Friday 16th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[David Warburton (Somerton and Frome) (Con)]

It is a privilege and a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Angus Brendan MacNeil)—[Interruption.] I nailed the pronunciation. I congratulate him on bringing this Bill to the House, and commend him for his moving, persuasive and fascinating speech. I also commend him for building so much support for the Bill. This really is an important debate about an important Bill. The subject is very close to my heart and something about which many of us feel strongly.

Many Members will remember the Dubs amendment to the Immigration Act 2016 that came before the House in April that year. The Dublin regulation said that refugee families had a right to stay together and allowed refugees to join family members who were legally in another country, so that families could be reunited. On the back of that, the Dubs amendment sought to extend that provision to unaccompanied children fleeing war in Syria who were living in the Calais camp at the time and did not have any family here.

I was one of only five Conservative Members to feel sufficiently strongly to support the Dubs amendment and vote against the Government. Just three of us now remain on these Benches, including my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester (Will Quince), who is just leaving the Chamber. The pressure that was exerted at the time was enough to persuade the Government subsequently to accept the provisions. I mention all that because I want to emphasise that I have thought about this policy area carefully. We all need to scrutinise it, particularly as the landscape shifts.

I am pleased that this Bill has come before the House for debate, because it is only by exploring these issues that we will, I hope, come to the right conclusions. As we do so, we need to look carefully at the background of the situation today. When we look at the UK’s reaction to the appalling humanitarian crisis in Syria, we can be rather proud of what is unquestionably an impressive record. Almost £2.5 billion in aid has been committed since 2012. That not only represents our largest ever response to a humanitarian crisis, but means that we are second only to the United States in providing support and far ahead of our European neighbours.

That support has been focused on educating refugees who have found themselves in countries such as Jordan and Lebanon, as well as helping them to find jobs. These are big numbers. Over 500,000 children in Syria have been in education thanks to UK aid, and many tens of thousands are enrolled in schools in surrounding countries. When we think about refugees coming to the UK, let us remember that in 2016—at the height of the crisis in the Calais camps—the UK resettled more refugees from outside Europe than any other EU state. Eurostat figures show that over a third of people resettled in the EU actually came to the UK.

In that process, the most vulnerable refugees have been supported through resettlement programmes, which offer safe and legal routes to protection, and are specifically designed to keep families together. Some 20,000 refugees from Syria will have been settled by 2020, and around half of them have already arrived here. I do not want to list endless figures, but over the past five years, nearly 25,000 family reunion visas have been issued, and some 50,000 people have been given protection status in the UK since 2010.

[Jeremy Quin (Horsham) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech. Will he reiterate the point about the refugees whom we are seeking to support? This country has a powerful record of supporting refugees in situ in the region, where they are most vulnerable. It is also the most vulnerable of those whom we are bringing to safety on these shores. Will he address that point?

[David Warburton]

Absolutely. My hon. Friend reads my mind; he has obviously been looking ahead at what I am about to say.

Under current rules, partners who are coming here must rightly show that their relationship predates their exile, that it is ongoing, and that both parties have an intent to continue their relationship here. Children must show that they are related, under 18 years old, unmarried and not living an independent life. Family reunion visas are exempt from some of the usual criteria. There is no need to demonstrate adequate finance to support dependants. Dependants do not have to demonstrate any proficiency in English, and there is no processing charge or immigration health surcharge.

When it comes to other family members—again, quite rightly—exceptions and additional compassionate circumstances can be taken into account. These kinds of exceptions could apply, for example, to help a dependent child over 18 or an unaccompanied child with a relative in the UK.

As the House will know, family reunion can also be enacted through other refugee resettlement schemes. The Mandate and the Gateway schemes offer routes for refugees living overseas to be settled in the UK where this is in their best interests. Both those schemes recognise family ties as part of this calculation. Family links are also one of the grounds for eligibility under the Syrian vulnerable persons resettlement scheme. The children at risk scheme is also helping to resettle up to 3,000 children and their families from the middle east and the north African region over the course of this Parliament.

The key part of looking closely at this area must be to focus on how best we target our responses and our support, as my hon. Friend the Member for Horsham (Jeremy Quin) pointed out. If we change policy here in the UK—if we signal and signpost ourselves as a more open door—how will that influence behaviour and therefore lives? Of course, as we have heard, those facing civil war or persecution have little choice about fleeing their homeland—that is pretty clear—but what follows that? How best can we step in to support them?

[Dr Whitford]

If these children have been accepted as refugees, does the hon. Gentleman not see that the cost to the Government, local government and everyone else in their future years will be less if they are part of a family and have a successful life and a successful settlement, and are not left here as orphans?

[David Warburton]

That is a very good point. I appreciate the hon. Lady’s intervention. Cost is not really a material matter in this. It is really about what factors will influence behaviour, and so what the result of a policy change will be.

[Robert Neill]

My hon. Friend is making a very powerful speech, a great deal of which I agree with. I recognise that the Government have done a great deal in many areas. One of the policy changes in the Bill is really quite modest: it is to make it easier for those who have fled in fear, as he said, to get around the very difficult and onerous requirements to provide documentation in order to access legal aid or exceptional case provisions. As I am sure he will know from his interest in the field, the British Red Cross found that some 74% of all family reunion cases were missing one or more documents. He will also know that someone who is genuinely fleeing in fear frequently does not have time to go through a checklist of documents they might need later. Is not that one of the reasons why this Bill, in a very modest way, improves things in the direction that he has argued for in the past?

[David Warburton]

There is a lot to be said for what my hon. Friend says. As he knows, exceptional compassionate circumstances do exist, and the Home Office guidance allows for those things. He is absolutely right that there are issues about this, such as timing. There are the practicalities and the logistics of the situation, which can very often mean that it is not as easy as it may seem.

[Mr Carmichael]

The hon. Gentleman asks the very legitimate question about what will be the impact of change. As we have heard from the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, current British policy is leading to authorities in Greece and Italy not sending children who would otherwise be eligible under the Dubs arrangements. Is the hon. Gentleman comfortable with the status quo in this regard?

[David Warburton]

No, I am not entirely comfortable with that. We need to look closely at how the Dubs scheme is now being run and what has happened to it since the Government accepted the amendment, because it has not necessarily been fully adopted, and councils have not taken it on in the way that they perhaps should have done.

I am not sure that secondary movements really do improve lives. There are examples that we can look at. In 2015, Germany’s asylum seeker intake increased by 155% as a result of people reacting specifically to policy change. Interestingly, more than 20% of the people who sought asylum in Germany that year were from the Balkan countries, which have been conflict-free for more than 20 years, so those people were not seeking refuge—they were seeking opportunity.

[Angus Brendan MacNeil]

Just to be clear, what we are doing is putting under-18s in the same category as over-18s. They are already here and we are just giving them the right to family life. If we ask the refugees who are watching us today, they will say that that is what they want. They are people like us and that is what they want to make their lives better. Some would argue that under-18s need their family even more than over-18s. We give this right to the over-18s, and we should give it to the under-18s who are here.

[David Warburton]

As I am sure no one would disagree, it would only be in the interests of people traffickers—no one else—for children to be encouraged to leave their families and undertake perilous, difficult, dangerous journeys in the hope that their relatives might be able to join them in future; and how much worse if they found themselves forced to do that?

My experience in chairing the inquiry by the all-party parliamentary group on the British Council into resilience to extremism in north Africa and the middle east has shown clearly that there are an appalling number of criminal gangs looking to exploit vulnerable people in the region. Our role must be first to provide support in the region, upholding, for all the reasons we have heard, the principle that those who need international protection should be able to claim it in the first safe country they reach.

[Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West) (SNP)]

Has the hon. Gentleman had the benefit of reading the Human Trafficking Foundation’s report of last summer, “An independent inquiry into the situation of separated and unaccompanied minors in parts of Europe”? If he does so, he will see that, using evidence, it knocked the myth of the pull factor on the head.

[David Warburton]

I have not read it, but I would be extremely interested to do so, so I will look at it. I thank the hon. and learned Lady. It sounds like an interesting report. However, the pull factor does appear to be cited time and again. As I said, there is a clear example in Germany. I would therefore be intrigued to know how that organisation has come to the opposite conclusion.

We need to look at the quickest and the least precarious route to safety for refugees, rather than travelling into and across Europe to reach the UK. Having said that, it is also vital that we are in a position to continually review and mould policy to adapt ourselves to changing circumstances, as the Bill seeks to do. I am very pleased, as I said, that it is before the House and we are able to debate it. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Worcestershire (Nigel Huddleston), who is no longer in his place, I warn against using language like “empathy bypass” because that is not in the interests of a friendly, productive, non-partisan debate. We all have views. Obviously we all feel empathy, and we may express that in different ways. All opinion can be equally and properly expressed and valued, I hope.

[Dr Whitford]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[David Warburton]

Let me get to the end of my speech.

I am very pleased that, as we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton Deane (Rebecca Pow), the Justice Secretary is undertaking a review of legal aid reforms in which he will, properly, address the legal aid changes in respect of immigration cases. I look forward to seeing the report later this year and any changes that will result.

Above all, in tackling the plight of refugees we need to look at the causes. The Government must continue, as I have every faith that they will, to support international efforts to find a comprehensive and sustainable solution to the root causes of the refugee crisis. Yes, we must respond carefully and deliberately to the consequences of the situation in the middle east, but we must also focus hard on the matter itself. I feel sure that the Government will continue to do this, and I am sure that the whole House, if nothing else, will support those efforts.