Relocation of Migrants in need of International Protection (Opt-in Decision)

John Redwood Excerpts

Monday 14th December 2015 Commons Chamber

[James Brokenshire]

Obviously, we are not party to the arrangements as we are using our opt-out. My hon. Friend highlights some of the issues that have arisen since the measures were put into place. I am aware that Slovakia and Hungary have recently filed legal challenges in the European Court of Justice against the relocation scheme. There are relevant concerns. In our view, the proposals are ill conceived and many more now question the viability of relocation as a tool to manage the migration crisis.

[John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

I strongly support the Government’s decision to opt out. Will the Minister explain something? Under the scheme that was agreed, if migrants were allocated a given country to settle in but then decided they would rather live in another EU country, what would stop them from moving?

[James Brokenshire]

My right hon. Friend has highlighted what might be described as secondary movement, and we remain conscious of that. Obviously, there is secondary movement within the Schengen area, but we maintain our own border controls and visa requirements. Practical issues with the scheme have been highlighted; to date, only about 160 people have been relocated under the measures thus far.

Rather than relocating those arriving in Europe, the Government have made clear that our policy is to focus our efforts on resettling vulnerable people in need of international protection. We continue to make the case that this is not just an EU problem but an international issue requiring concerted action from a whole range of international parties.

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[Keir Starmer (Holborn and St Pancras) (Lab)]

I am glad we have the opportunity to debate this vitally important issue today. Political unrest and widespread violations of human rights have led to millions of people being displaced. The UNHCR says that there are 4.3 million Syrian refugees alone. This is, as the Minister said, the worst humanitarian crisis in Europe since the second world war, and it is clearly the most important issue now facing the EU.

Over the past nine months, the EU has seen unprecedented levels of migration, with more than 812,000 asylum seekers registered in the EU up till the end of September. The UNHCR says that more than 3,000 people are tragically dead or missing as a result of attempted crossings of the Mediterranean. The vast majority of the pressures of those incoming migrants has fallen on Italy and Greece, with 99.5% of migrants who cross the Mediterranean arriving in these two countries. That is the background to the EU-proposed programme of relocation in the UK. Britain rightly has an opt-out in relation to migration matters and has decided not to opt back into these measures.

Although we support that decision, it is disappointing that it has taken over six months and repeated prompting by the European Scrutiny Committee to secure this debate on the Floor of the House. We recognise, of course, that situations are often fast-moving and that the Government should not be constrained, but we think the Government should reflect on the approach they have taken so far in relation to the procedure.

On the substance of the matter, although we do not want to see Britain opt into mandatory quotas, we believe that we should take an active role in tackling the migration crisis across the EU, as well as on our doorstep. In this respect we take issue with the Government’s response. Just as we have joined military operations to play our part in tackling ISIS, so we have a moral responsibility to work with other EU states to help to deal with the large numbers of refugees who are fleeing the barbaric conditions in Syria and elsewhere. The Government have pledged to accept 20,000 refugees over this Parliament—4,000 a year. After more than two years of Labour calling on the Government to take action, this is undoubtedly a welcome step and was welcomed by the House, but the Government still refuse to accept people in desperate need who need relocation from other EU states.

Four thousand refugees represents less than 0.5% of the refugees entering the EU this year. That is not good enough. The UK has a proud history of offering sanctuary to those in need of refuge and should not shrink from its responsibilities because it has the fortune not to be on the frontline of the crisis.

[John Redwood]

Can the hon. Gentleman explain how many refugees he thinks we ought to take and what the criteria would be?

[Keir Starmer]

Our position is that mandatory quotas are not the way forward. Any numbers taken in this country should be on only a voluntary basis. In view of what we see as the current failure of relocation policy, the Government should rethink whether we should take some numbers from Europe on a voluntary basis. It would be for the Government to decide what number, on a voluntary basis, would be the right number. It has been suggested that if every city or county in Britain took just 10 refugee families, we would be able to help perhaps 10,000 individuals. As I say, in the first instance we call on the Government to reconsider their approach in the light of the prevailing situation.

It goes without saying that under any scheme, and under a voluntary scheme in particular, there should be robust and effective vetting and safeguarding procedures, wherever those procedures take place. We therefore call on the Government to reconsider the refusal to take people relocated from other member states on a voluntary basis, without opting into a mandatory system. Even if we are not part of the mandatory relocation scheme, we should do everything in our power to ensure that it works effectively. The EU relocation scheme has so far relocated just 130 individuals from Italy and 30 from Greece of its intended 160,000 people, which seems to indicate that it may be incapable of dealing successfully with the pressures being faced in Italy and Greece. In addition, only six of the 22 member states have notified the EU that they have the capacity to host relocated individuals.

What steps, if any, are the Government taking to support the relocation programme and to help to cope with this volume? On a point that has been raised on more than one occasion by the European Scrutiny Committee, in the absence of voluntary relocation how do the Government interpret the principle of solidarity and fair sharing of responsibility in the EU?

Let me turn to the questions that we have on the motion, which we support. Can the Minister update the House on the number of Syrian refugees who have arrived in Britain since the Prime Minister announced that we would take 20,000 over the course of this Parliament? In addition, the Home Office has stated that 55 local authorities will welcome Syrian refugees into their communities before Christmas. How many of those authorities have so far welcomed refugees? The Government say they are reluctant to take migrants relocated from within the EU for fear of creating new pull factors, but they have consistently produced little evidence that this would be the result of allowing internal relocation. As the European Scrutiny Committee has observed, the Government have been thin on substance on this issue. Can the Minister now give some substance on the pull factor argument? Surely we must recognise the level of desperation that forces people to leave their homes and attempt the journey to the EU in the knowledge that they or their loved ones might not make it. That will be a significant factor whatever relocation programme is put in place.

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[John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

I support the Government’s decision to exercise the opt-out. I am pleased that the Government and the official Opposition agree that the United Kingdom should not be part of the Schengen system and that they both wanted to exercise the opt-out.

As an island nation with a neighbour in the Republic of Ireland and with the three countries on our principal island entirely surrounded by water with no land frontier, it clearly makes sense for the United Kingdom to have her own border arrangements. Indeed, it is fundamental to a sovereign people and a sovereign Parliament that one of the decisions that we should be able to make for ourselves is who we invite in and on what terms we invite them in to become citizens of our country. It is a great privilege to be a citizen of our country. It brings all sorts of benefits, as well as responsibilities. Surely that is a decision that this Parliament should wish to make, with the Government offering guidance and leadership, to show that we are in control on this fundamental point.

As the Minister indicated in response to interventions, even though we have opted out of this proposal for allocating refugees and other recent arrivals in the European Union under a quota system, what the Schengen countries do at their common external frontier still matters to the United Kingdom. While we remain under the current European Union treaties, we have to accept the freedom of movement rules. That means that if any other country or part of the European Union accepts people in, they may well be eligible, in due course, to move to the United Kingdom. We are therefore interested directly in how those countries conduct themselves and what they wish to do by way of inviting people into the general European Union area.

We are also interested in the policy of the Schengen countries, which we have opted out of, because the British Government have none the less agreed to spend money and offer resource to police the common external frontier of the Schengen area. In particular, we have committed resources to tackling some part of the desperate problems that the EU migration policy has caused in the Mediterranean, where all too many people commit themselves to hazardous and expensive journeys and then need to be rescued by the Royal Navy and other naval contingents.

[Sir William Cash]

Does my right hon. Friend have any idea of the extent of our share of the costs to which he has just referred? Perhaps he might ask the Minister to consider that. As I understand it, it could be as much as £150 million, but, because the cost of providing for Schengen relocations will, by its nature, be ever-increasing, presumably that amount will go up.

[John Redwood]

That is an important issue and the Chairman of the European Scrutiny Committee is right to raise it.

I have some sympathy for what the SNP has said. It is a disgrace that our rich and relatively successful continent is facing this huge crisis, with many refugees and economic migrants arriving, and the system is unable to cope with them. We have to ask why that is. Given that we do not wish to see people undertaking such hazardous journeys and that we do not feel that the way in which European Union policy is impacting on those people is decent, we need to influence our partners in the European Union to do something better.

Again, I find myself in complete agreement with the Government. They are right that the correct thing to do for refugees is to work with the United Nations and our other partners to make sure that there is a safe place of refuge near to the place they fled from, and be there to talk to them and to consider who would like to come to countries in Europe and elsewhere and decide on what basis we will admit people from those camps. That is surely the humane way to approach the issue, and it obviates the need for people to undertake extremely hazardous, and often very expensive, journeys. Only the richest and fittest among those groups can undertake such journeys, only then to discover that the hazards are too great and that they may lose their lives or need rescuing from the Mediterranean. Surely the money that we are spending on picking people out of the Mediterranean could be better spent on an orderly system closer to the place from which people are fleeing, and on helping them to get legal transport to come to the country of their choice once they have been offered that facility.

Such a system would also mean that we could make clearer and better distinctions between economic migrants and genuine refugees. There are, of course, a lot of genuine refugees from a country such as Syria, but different considerations should apply in the way that we respond to a lot of economic migrants who come along at the same time from a range of countries in the middle east and Africa.

[Dr Lisa Cameron (East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow) (SNP)]

Does the right hon. Gentleman have anything further to add about the unaccompanied children who are arriving in Europe and who appear to be extremely vulnerable and in need of assistance?

[John Redwood]

Of course our hearts—mine as well as the hon. Lady’s—go out to those children, and such things should not be happening. It is only happening because adults have allowed it to, or made it happen, because children do not normally have their own money or wherewithal to do such things. Somewhere in the process adults have persuaded or set up those children to make those journeys, and placed them in the hands of people traffickers who may be very destructive towards their interests and their lives. The remit of the United Kingdom is quite large, but we cannot get into the homes and minds of all the parents, aunts and uncles who commit those children to such hazardous journeys, or into the minds of other adults who should be offering care if a child’s parents have been tragically taken from them by violence in the country in which they were living.

Surely the European Union, with all its powerful and rich countries, could do a better job in coming up with an orderly and sensible way of handing help and assistance to genuine refugees who are being forced out of war-torn areas or countries by civil wars and violence. We must also send a clear message to economic migrants that there is an orderly system, and that they are not welcome if they turn up as illegal migrants. People should go through a proper process in the country from which they are coming, or in a place adjacent to that country if they have already started their journey. That would be a better way of doing things.

When Angela Merkel—perhaps for the best of reasons, both because Germany would like a bigger workforce and because she felt very sorry for these people—suggested that many more migrants should turn up, I fear that that compounded the problem. Far from being a caring solution, it meant that many thousands more people committed themselves to hazardous journeys, only to find when they arrived that other countries in the European Union did not have the same view as Angela Merkel, that the policy was not clear, and that certain borders were shut in a rather unpleasant way with razor wire and high fences, because the numbers were simply too great and people could not be handled.

I support the motion and urge the Government to do far more to try to persuade our partners that EU policy is letting down refugees and economic migrants, as well as the member states and inhabitants of the European Union. This issue is of vital interest to us because we want the EU to have a more caring policy, and because decisions taken in any other EU country can have a direct impact on our own migration policy, owing to our current status as a member of that body and as part of the freedom of movement provisions. Many people watching these awful tragedies unfold on television, or when reading newspapers or even listening to some of our debates in this place, will conclude that as an island nation we can—and should—control our own borders. We could do a rather more humane job than the European Union is currently doing, and perhaps for Britain, that is the best answer.