Immigration Bill

Debate between Fiona Mactaggart and Yvette Cooper

Ping Pong: House of Commons
Monday 9th May 2016 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

I think the hon. Lady makes an important point. In fact, among the points I was going to make was to say that the Government should not only work with local authorities—they need to make sure that local authorities have the funding—but, frankly, should not expect Kent to take more child refugees, because it has already done a huge amount and other local councils across the country need to do more. That support will need to be funded.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Refugees has done a great job in working with local authorities to make sure that funding is available for the existing programme for Syrian refugees. My local authority, Wakefield Council, has offered to take some of the families under that programme, but that offer has not yet been taken up. The council has come forward saying it is ready to help and it has offered places, but such places have not yet been forthcoming, because the Government have not yet brought them through the system.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[Yvette Cooper]

I will not give way because I am conscious that other Members who have put in a huge amount of effort want to make a quick contribution.

Sir Erich Reich, the chairman of Kindertransport, the Association of Jewish Refugees, said last week:

“The echoes of the past haunt many of my fellow Kinder and I whose fate similarly rested with members of the British parliament. I feel it is incumbent on us to once again demonstrate our compassion and human-kindness to provide sanctuary to those in need.”

For us, as Members of the British Parliament today, it is a fitting echo of the past that we can stand together to support the amendment in the name of one of Sir Erich’s fellow Kinder, Lord Alf Dubs, and help a new generation of child refugees.

Unaccompanied Children

Debate between Fiona Mactaggart and Yvette Cooper

Tuesday 19th April 2016 Westminster Hall

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes) on securing the important debate. When he started his speech he made some cracks about needing a long-term plan, and I want to talk about time, because one of the problems with the immigration system is that it does not recognise how important timeliness is in a child’s life. A week, a month or a year in a child’s life, in comparison with an adult’s, is an enormous amount of time. One of the problems is the lack of timely intervention and support for vulnerable children, in France and also when they are in the UK.

In the case of ZAT et ors in the immigration tribunal, the judgment said:

“Insufficient and inappropriate reception conditions for unaccompanied asylum seeking children”—

in France—

“were considered to impair their effective access to the asylum procedure”.

We also learned that the children in that case were not eligible for legal aid, and that there was an endlessly bureaucratic process for their cases even to begin. I hear about Home Office officials being sent to France to help sort out those things but I do not see the speeding up of individual applications as a result, so that is the first step we should take.

The second step is trying to help local authorities that are acting on the issue. A number of Members have spoken about the situation in Kent. I attended a presentation by Philip Segurola from Kent and, strikingly, in September last year, instead of the usual 20 or so individual unaccompanied children more than 200 arrived there in a single month. We need to support local authorities better to support unaccompanied asylum-seeking children.

Beyond that, we know that child advocates work—the mixed results claim about the advocacy trial is spin. The independent University of Bedfordshire analysis of the outcomes of the trial was overwhelmingly positive. It showed that children experienced someone being on their side. That is the most essential thing. With overburdened social workers, children do not have an experience of anyone being on their side in the labyrinthine bureaucracy of asylum seeking, and it is urgent that we ensure that every child at risk of trafficking or who has been trafficked, and also asylum-seeking children, get access to an advocate who can be on their side. Although it is true that some of those children went missing, in almost every case in the trial it was before they were allocated an advocate. A number of the case studies in the Bedfordshire report showed that it was the child advocate who found a child who had gone missing. That is the second area where we need to act urgently.

Thirdly, we need to change a procedure that has existed for decades. When a child applies for asylum, the Home Office does nothing—it does not take action; it does not investigate the claim; it waits until just before the child’s 18th birthday to take any action in relation to the claim. The process was described by the Home Affairs Committee as serving

“administrative convenience more than the best interests of children”,

and that is right.

I understand that it is difficult for a child to make a compelling case for asylum, but the state has a responsibility, at an early stage, to investigate the nature of the claim because three, four or five years later it is difficult to be able to support such a child. We are in a situation where children are failing to be supported in Europe, all over the place. In Lesbos they are being fed by sandwiches being thrown over a fence. That is unacceptable, and we should not be part of it.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend makes an important point about not knowing the full situation and about a number of children disappearing. In light of that, I have put parliamentary questions to the Minister about the number of take charge requests that have come to the British Government and I have been told that they cannot provide that information. It really troubles me that we do not have the information on which to even make the decisions. Does my right hon. Friend agree that that is a huge problem? How can the Government reassure us if they do not even have the facts?

[Fiona Mactaggart]

Indeed, and it is not only the UK that does not have the facts; strikingly, many Administrations all over Europe, including in countries we admire for being bureaucratically effective, such as Germany, do not have the statistics. We really are not looking after children. The state is the parent in those circumstances and, frankly, we are the kind of parent who, if we were a human being, should be facing court for failure to adequately parent. That is not acceptable, and action is needed urgently.