Refugee Crisis in Europe

Debate between Geraint Davies and Adam Holloway

Tuesday 8th September 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Holloway]

Absolutely, and I think we have a deep moral obligation to people who find themselves caught up in the wreckage of warring nations, or who find themselves persecuted.

During the Balkan wars, I posed as a deaf and dumb Bosnian Muslim in Serb territory—from the Kosara valley, Banja Luka and over the bridge at Bosanska Gradiška. We travelled down in a great big convoy of escaping Bosnian Muslims and Croats on trains. I ended up living in a mosque with refugees and then in a refugee camp in northern Croatia, followed by a prison cell in Austria, having been arrested with the Macedonian people smugglers who were taking us into Europe. Most of the people with whom I travelled from Serb territory remained in local refugee camps until the war ended. The vast majority now remain in former Yugoslavia, if not in their old homes.

These terrified people were most certainly refugees, and I will never forget the behaviour of the soldiers, and border guards and police towards these families, including an incident in which a child was literally picked up by the hair and thrown out of a bus on to a concrete hard shoulder. With 4 million Syrians displaced outside their country, and many more within it, what will be the effect of an open door from the European Union? Can anyone tell me what number of people would understandably move west? Can anyone tell me at what point our nations would turn round and say, “Hang on, we cannot keep on taking people from poorer countries into our communities”?

[Geraint Davies]

The hon. Gentleman said that Germany was “bonkers”. Is he aware that after the second world war, Germany absorbed an extra 12 million people, mainly Germans fleeing from Czechoslovakia and elsewhere. It has an open door for another 800,000 next year—it was 300,000 last year— and it has an ageing population so it could do with the workers. It is not “bonkers”. It has an open heart and an open mind—neither of which the hon. Gentleman has.

[Mr Holloway]

Well, I think it is completely bonkers. In my view, it is also immoral because we will see more and more bodies washed up. We are just going to have to disagree on this.

I think we could help a lot more people if the international community behaved a bit more like my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, by trying to support as many Syrian refugees as possible through helping the many, as opposed to the few—helping all those camped out across Lebanon, Turkey, Jordan and elsewhere. That would be better than focusing on a lucky minority who will get to Europe.

Back in May, the European Commission made the insane proposal that member countries should take in migrants and refugees under a quota scheme. Notwithstanding other comments that he has made, Viktor Orbán, the Prime Minister of Hungary, noted at the time:

“The proposal on the table from the European Commission…is absurd, bordering on insanity… It is an incentive for human traffickers and will simply tell people: yes, try to cross the Mediterranean at all costs.”

Our Government rightly ruled out the EU asylum policy as an open invitation to uncontrolled immigration. The Australian general Jim Molan put it like this:

“Europe needs to make a very big decision and to make it soon. If it does not want to control its borders then it should establish a sea bridge across the Mediterranean, let everyone in who wants to come, and not let these people die.”

Let us not forget that there are some very wealthy Sunni states with dogs in the Syrian fight. Refugees should be looked after in the first available country that they come to, or in their regions. There are plenty of very wealthy countries with land that is closer to those regions.