Unaccompanied Children (Greece and Italy)

Diane Abbott Excerpts

Thursday 23rd February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern) and others on securing this important debate. We have heard powerful speeches by my hon. Friend, my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), the hon. and learned Member for Torridge and West Devon (Mr Cox), my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, Southall (Mr Sharma), the hon. Members for Mid Derbyshire (Pauline Latham) and for Dundee West (Chris Law), the right hon. Member for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan), my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford West (Naz Shah), who informed us that she has actually fostered refugee children, which gave what she had to say added significance, the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone), my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy), the hon. Members for South Cambridgeshire (Heidi Allen), for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes), for Colchester (Will Quince) and for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton) and, finally, the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald).

Most Members, on both sides of the House and from all parties, have made it abundantly clear that in effectively closing the Dubs scheme after accepting a mere 350 children, the Government have fallen far short of what Members in both Houses thought they had voted for.

[Clive Lewis (Norwich South) (Lab)]

I have sat and listened to the debate and heard powerful presentations from many Members across the House. I think that the debate distils down to two very clear things. First, what do we want to look like to the rest of the world? What example do we want to set? Secondly, what type of country do we want to be? Does my right hon. Friend agree with that?

[Ms Abbott]

I agree that this is about asking, particularly post-Brexit, what sort of Britain we are: are we a genuinely outward-looking, internationalist and humanist country, or are we a country that seeks ways to avoid its moral obligations?

I have to begin by acknowledging the investment and exemplary work of Her Majesty’s Government with regard to those refugees who have stayed in camps in the region. I have visited those camps, but this debate is about the Syrian refugee children and others who are in mainland Europe. Some Members and, sadly, the Minister have implied that if we pretend that those tens of thousands of child refugees who are already in Europe somehow do not exist and do not matter, they will disappear.

I must direct the focus of the House to the tens of thousands of refugee children in mainland Europe. I contend that in narrowing the safe and legal routes from Europe for those children, the Government run the risk of acting as a marketing manager for people traffickers. I have visited the camps in France and Greece. These children may be in safe countries, as some Members have said, but they are living in horrible conditions. That is despite the best efforts and the personal kindness of—

[Mr Bone]

Will the right hon. Lady give way?

[Ms Abbott]

I have to make progress.

[Mr Bone]

It is supposed to be a debate.

[Ms Abbott]

I have listened with a lot of care to all the speeches by Members on both sides of the House and now I have to make progress in order to leave time for my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral South.

I have visited the camps in France and Greece. The children there may be in safe countries, but they are living in horrible conditions. That is despite the fact that so many local people do their best to be kind and helpful. Far from arguing, as some Members in this House have done, that providing more safe and legal routes from Europe is some kind of incentive, as if it is a choice, no one who has visited the camps and informal encampments and looked these families and children in the eye can seriously argue that they have come to Europe on some sort of jaunt and can easily be turned back. Remember that these are families and young people who have risked their lives, who have seen people die crossing the Sahara and who have then risked their lives again crossing the Mediterranean.

Of course it is true that the French Government should have done more in the past. It was because the French were so slow originally to register refugees of all ages that so many set their hearts on the UK, but let us be realistic about the conditions facing refugees in Europe. In Greece, the conditions facing asylum seekers were so dire that as long ago as 2011, the European Court of Human Rights ruled it unlawful to send people back there. Only last year, in December, did the European Commission finally decide that sufficient improvements had been made that other EU member states could start sending people back to Greece.

How far have conditions improved really? I am not so sure that they have. Last month, just weeks after the Commission said it was appropriate to send people to Greece, there were reports that three migrants in an overcrowded camp in Moria on Lesbos had died within 10 days of each other. It is thought that the immediate cause was carbon monoxide poisoning, after men sharing overcrowded tents inhaled toxic fumes from the heaters they had been forced to use in the harsh winter temperatures.

In Italy, where the number of new arrivals reached its highest ever level last year, conditions may have been worse still. Recent measures requiring the Italian authorities to fingerprint new arrivals have led to shocking abuses, according to Amnesty International. It has documented cases of the police using beatings and electric shocks to force compliance from those who are reluctant to have their fingerprints taken. So say that those countries are technically safe, but do not say that the conditions in those countries are acceptable and justify closing off one of the safe, legal routes for children to come from mainland Europe to this country when they have relatives here or other appropriate legal reasons for coming here.

On the question of local government capacity, we have heard that David Simmonds of the Local Government Association says that current Home Office child refugee funding for local councils covers only 15% of the funding costs. That is a serious matter when so many local authorities led by all parties—Labour and Conservative—are under terrible funding pressure. There has been very limited consultation with local authorities. All the evidence suggests that, given more time and appropriate funding, many more councils would step up to provide accommodation for child refugees. An absolute lack of capacity among local authorities simply has not been proven.

[Mr Goodwill]

Local authorities now receive £41,610 a year for each unaccompanied child under 16. I think that is slightly more than 15% of the costs.

[Ms Abbott]

I can only listen to the LGA, which said that the money covers only 50% of funding costs. The Minister must have that debate with local government.

It is all too easy to say that closing off routes, whether the Dubs scheme or Dublin, for refugee children in Europe is acting in their best interests—that somehow they will go back, and that the fact that we are doing good work in the region offsets the fact that children are being left in squalor at the mercy of people traffickers on the continent of Europe. It is all too easy, but it is not right. The hallmark of a civilised country is the fairness, the justice and the humanity with which it treats the most vulnerable. Who could be more vulnerable than refugee children?

I join many Members on both sides of the House who plead with the Government, even at this late stage, to fulfil the hopes and expectations of Members in this House and the other place when they voted for the Dubs amendment. We plead with the Government to fulfil not only their legal but their moral obligations, and to act to save the tens of thousands of refugee children still on the continent of Europe from the squalor, the people traffickers and the exploitation, and, perhaps above all, to save this country’s good name and reputation.