Unaccompanied Children

Heidi Allen Excerpts

Tuesday 19th April 2016 Westminster Hall

[Helen Whately (Faversham and Mid Kent) (Con)]

I very much welcome this debate and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes) on securing it.

I imagine that we are all here today because we want Britain to play its part in dealing with the refugee situation and in looking after the unaccompanied children in this country, and across Europe and the middle east. The debate is very much about how we do that and how we ensure that we do it well.

I visited Calais last year—I think it was in October— and clearly I saw awful conditions there. There were very few children; the few children I saw were with their parents. However, we know that there are some unaccompanied children there and that those children who are there are usually in their teens, although some may be younger than that. I have also visited a refugee camp in Turkey, where I saw pretty good conditions—okay, it was a refugee camp that the Turkish Government chose to show visitors. However, I spoke to people there who were living in relatively good conditions, and without exception they wanted to come to Europe all the same.

I also represent a constituency in Kent and as my neighbour—my hon. Friend the Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Mrs Grant), who was here earlier—has already mentioned, we have a large number of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children in Kent. It is one of the areas that is feeling the effect of this issue particularly heavily, but we also have experience of how to deal with it well.

In the limited time available to me, I will just make a couple of other points. The first is that in addressing this problem of unaccompanied children, we must absolutely be compassionate, but we must also avoid being emotional and failing to think through the unintended consequences of whatever choices we make. And we must realise that we are making choices.

In the debate as to whether we should bring 3,000 unaccompanied children over from Europe, for instance, we should be mindful that, although we usually talk about Syrian refugees, about half of the unaccompanied children in Europe are Eritrean, and many others are from Afghanistan and Albania, although there will be some Syrian children among them. We need to be conscious that those who are calling for more children to be brought here are calling for children of many nationalities to be helped. That would be one decision, and a different decision from choosing, for instance, to focus our efforts on helping children who are fleeing Syria. I am not saying that the children from other countries do not need help; any unaccompanied child needs some help. I am just saying that there is a decision to be made.

[Heidi Allen (South Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

My hon. Friend has, in fact, just answered the question that I was going to ask. Does it make children any less vulnerable or at risk that they are from a country other than Syria? However, she just answered that question, for which I thank her.

[Helen Whately]

Indeed I did, but I very much appreciate my hon. Friend’s point and thank her for it.

My second point, which is very much in keeping with the tone and focus of this debate, is the importance of doing a really good job by those who come here. The worst thing is to raise hopes among young people—in fact, it is even worse to encourage them to come here—and then to let them down and not do a good job. Having talked to organisations that are active in Kent in looking after unaccompanied asylum-seeking children, I know that it is difficult to do a good job. Children need an enormous amount of help, and they really need foster homes; they need to be placed in a family environment, and to be given health, mental health, schooling and all of that.

The particular challenge that we have in Kent is that foster homes are full. We have around 800 unaccompanied asylum-seeking children who are under 18 and around 400 to 500 care leavers, so we have a huge number of children to look after. We need a national drive to find more foster homes, to ensure that children who come here can be looked after and British children who need foster homes can also be found places in foster homes. There is a limited supply of such homes.

I think that my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate said that 10,000 foster homes were available through the Homes for Good charity. That sounds like a fantastic supply and there needs to be some way of matching the demand with what appears to be the supply; I hope that the Minister can pick up on that point.

Finally, we need a plan for what happens when these children reach 18, and for care leavers. In Kent, we welcome the extra funding that the Government have provided for under-18s, which has made it more feasible to look after under-18s, but there is a question about care leavers, as they still need extra help, which requires extra money.

The most important thing is that when we bring unaccompanied children here, we do a good job. We must not raise hopes and then dash them; we must do a very good job by those children, so that they have a really good start in life.

--- Later in debate ---

[Heidi Allen (South Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

I will be as fast as I can, Madam Chair.

[Valerie Vaz (in the Chair)]

You have one minute.

[Heidi Allen]

Our ability to save the lives of children is immediate, doable and incumbent on us as members of the human race. In the past two months, I have visited Lesbos and Calais. Given the world’s attention on these unprecedented levels of migration, I was astounded to find a lack of coherent asylum processing and support for the most vulnerable refugees—children. In Lesbos, aid workers told of the promise of hotspots and resources to identify and process migrants, but we saw little more than organised chaos. Children identified as unaccompanied were held for their safety in a disused jail—welcome to Europe. So it was not altogether surprising that many sought to avoid that fate by ducking through the net of the authorities, but at least there was some kind of system. If I thought that was bad, nothing could have prepared me for what I saw—or did not see—in Calais. There was no asylum processing and no sign saying, “This way to safety.” Neither were there signs saying, “This way to avoid prostitution, trafficking and abuse.” The camp is eerily quiet until late morning because during the night, everyone, children included, is trying to board anything with wheels.

We met a young boy from Syria called Karim. He was desperate for human contact and hugged us and smiled sheepishly. He disappeared days after our visit. After the jungle was semi-demolished, a census carried out by self-appointed good British people, Help Refugees and Citizens UK, discovered that 129 children had gone missing. Karim did turn up a week or so later in Kent, thank God. However, he should not have had to make such a journey of danger and desperation.

In January, the Government said that they would work with the UNHCR to resettle unaccompanied children and with charities to assist and protect the children in transit across Europe. I do not doubt the herculean efforts of the Government in the region, but in Europe we must do more.

I have one final thought. I travelled home from Calais on a train with three young boys from Syria, the first to be resettled in the new reunification process. There should have been four, but there was no room in the car to the station for four children, so one was sent back to the “jungle” for one more month until the next car came along.

When the great British public are feeding and safeguarding the refugee children of Calais, I am filled with immense pride, but also embarrassment that they are having to do that work. If the British people are there, so should the Government be there. It is not France’s problem. Our compassion, Dunkirk spirit and geographical proximity have made it our problem, too, so I urge the Minister to do everything in his power to find those children before it is too late and bring them home for good.