Gary Streeter
Main Page: Gary Streeter (Conservative - South West Devon)Department Debates - View all Gary Streeter's debates with the Home Office
Unaccompanied Minors Seeking Asylum
Gary Streeter Excerpts(1 year, 11 months ago)
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Sir Gary Streeter (in the Chair)
If Angela Crawley is ready to go, it is a delight to call her to move the motion. I will then call the Minister to respond. Just to remind Members, there is not an opportunity in a 30-minute debate for the Member in charge to wind up. That is our convention.
Angela Crawley (Lanark and Hamilton East) (SNP)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered unaccompanied minors seeking asylum.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Gary, and I am grateful for the opportunity to lead today’s debate on an urgent and sadly all too familiar issue. Last month, 30 miles out at sea, at 3 am, in freezing conditions, four migrants died after a small boat capsized in the English channel. That is not a new story, sadly—it happens too often—but one of the dead was just a teenager. That news never gets any easier to hear or digest.
In that same tragedy, eight children were among those who were successfully rescued by the coastguard. The Mirror reported that one 12-year-old survivor was escaping Afghanistan after his whole family had been killed by the Taliban. None of us can imagine the horrors that drive people to get on boats or take perilous journeys to cross the channel, yet those horrors are experienced by innocent children every day.
Unaccompanied asylum-seeking children arrive alone, afraid, and have no idea where to start. Unfortunately, this Government are fixated on criminalising and discrediting desperate people who have come to the UK to seek a new life. Vulnerable children and young people are having their rights and protections stripped, and that is the wrong approach. Our duty must be to give them a warm welcome, a fresh start and the protection and hope that they so desperately need when they arrive to seek refuge in the UK.
Sir Gary Streeter (in the Chair)
This is a half-hour debate; do you have the permission of the mover of the motion to speak?
Angela Crawley
The Minister should be mindful when quoting statistics. It is somewhat misleading to suggest that, because Scotland is using fewer hotels, it is not adequately playing its part. Most local authorities in Scotland have more than stepped up to the plate. The use of selective statistics is very misleading and not great practice. Let us be honest: are not most hotels not suitable accommodation, temporary or otherwise, for individuals? It is therefore misleading to suggest that Scotland is not playing its part. There are many other ways in which we accommodate asylum seekers. [Interruption.]
Sir Gary Streeter (in the Chair)
Order. There is a Division in the House. Can the Minister finish in 30 seconds? I suspect not. If not, we will have to come back.
Robert Jenrick
Could we come back? The hon. Lady had a number of points I should address.