Immigration Bill

Kelly Tolhurst Excerpts

Tuesday 1st December 2015 Commons Chamber

[Anne McLaughlin]

I thank the Minister for giving me the opportunity to make a point about the language that we use. He says “failed asylum seekers”; I say “refused asylum seekers”. Let us not forget that the majority of those who are refused—or failed—by this Government go on to win their appeal when it comes to court.

[Kelly Tolhurst (Rochester and Strood) (Con)]

The hon. Lady uses the phrase “asylum seekers”. Does she accept that the Bill focuses on a range of categories of people who are living here and may become illegal, and is not specifically targeted at asylum seekers?

[Anne McLaughlin]

I absolutely am aware of that, but we have limited time so I have to focus on the most important impact this part of the Bill will have on people. That is why I am talking about the most vulnerable people and they are the asylum seekers who have been refused.

--- Later in debate ---

[Yvette Cooper]

I wish to speak to new clauses 1 and 11, which focus on the response that we should have to the refugee crisis and the way in which the family reunion rules for refugees are simply not working. The background to this is that the European refugee crisis is showing no signs of easing. Nearly 1 million refugees have travelled to our continent this year. Some 700,000 people have travelled through Greece and, in the final weeks of November, almost 3,000 people were arriving on the tiny island of Lesbos by boat each day—this is even in the November cold. A huge number of refugees are stuck in the Balkans, often in very difficult and increasingly harsh weather conditions; there are refugees camps in Idomeni, on the Greek border, and thousands more refugees are in Serbia, including unaccompanied children. Other countries in Europe are doing considerably more than us, and I continually urge the Government to do more, as we need to do our bit to support the refugees. I am talking about those not just in the camps in the regions, but those who have fled to Europe.

Tomorrow the Prime Minister will argue that Britain should not stand back and let other countries shoulder the entire security burden that stems from the events in Syria. That will be a powerful point for him to make, but what follows from that is the fact that we should not stand back and allow other countries to shoulder so much more of the burden of responding to the refugee crisis, especially as we are not doing enough to help.

This year, Britain will take just 1,000 refugees from Syria, and yet 3,000 arrive each day in Lesbos. I was struck by what the Minister said about asylum shopping. Given that we had only 25,000 asylum seekers in Britain last year, compared with 700,000 in Germany, how can he seriously talk about asylum shopping? In fact, what we are talking about are families who have been split up by a terrible refugee crisis and who simply want to be together. Families have been ripped apart by a bloody and brutal civil war in Syria. Parents have been torn apart from their children and brothers apart from their sisters.

I have met Syrian children on their own in refugee camps. There are 11 and 12-year-olds desperate to be reunited with their families. Our current rules make it very hard to reunite families of refugees who have been split up by the crisis. The British Red Cross is currently supporting an Iraqi refugee who hopes to be reunited with his wife and two daughters, one of whom is disabled and has the mental age of a seven-year-old. She is entirely dependent on her mother, but she is over 18 and so is not eligible to come to the UK under the Minister’s family reunion rules for refugees. She is stuck in Iraq, and the strain of being a sole carer is taking its toll on her mother.

Another case of the Red Cross is that of a 15-year-old boy whose parents have both been killed in the war and whose brother has been granted refugee status in the UK. He has not registered an asylum claim anywhere in Europe, but has had his fingerprints taken in Greece. Understandably, his brother wants him to join him in the UK, but he is currently not eligible and has been told to return to Greece where he knows no one and has no prospects. He is now in Italy, but is getting no support from the state and is living with another Syrian family. His brother is incredibly worried about his safety, as he feels that he is at risk of being exploited by gangs of traffickers, which, as we know, is what happens to many unaccompanied refugee children.

When I was in Calais a few weeks ago, I met a single mother with two small children. She thought that her husband had been killed in an Assad jail. The family were living in a small caravan and tents in the mud in Calais. They had left Syria and been financially supported for a while by her father-in-law, but he can now no longer afford to support them. She told me that her own father and brother were here in Britain, and that was why she had paid money to people traffickers to travel across Europe to try to join them, as they were her only remaining family. She said that they could support her here in Britain. [Interruption.] The Minister says what about Dublin. What a good point. What about Dublin III, because, in so many cases, Dublin III should help to reunite families, but it does not do that? It is not working,

Quite a few people I talked to in Calais probably would have a case under the Dublin III arrangement, but there was no process for them to apply to. Those who had looked at it were told that the French procedures and the bureaucracy would not allow it and that it was too difficult. This is why new clause 11 is so important. It urges the Minister to look at the way in which Dublin III is being implemented across Europe. Clearly, there is a huge problem here, and it could be what is driving some of the illegal migration. It could also be driving people to take huge risks at Calais. Why are they trying so desperately hard to get to Britain? Why are they not going to Germany, Sweden or other countries? Many of them told me that it was because they had family in Britain, and they were people who ought to have refugee status. Their claims were not being assessed so they were taking huge risks, causing security risks for the Eurotunnel trains and causing great problems. They were stuck in the mud in the cold winter of northern France. Much of this is to do with what France and other countries need to do, but I urge the Minister to review Dublin III. It is just not working in practice for too many of the refugees who are fleeing terrible conflict.

When many refugee families have been hit by crisis, persecution or war, they may lose their closest family members. They may no longer have the parent or the child that current family reunion rules cover. Their nearest relative may now be a brother or sister or someone who is not covered by the existing rules. That is why it is so important to look at the wider family relationships of refugees.

My intention in drawing up new clause 1 was to make it easier to reunite refugee families and to help refugees whose closest family are already refugees here in Britain to get sanctuary here too. That would cover the case of the 19-year-old in Beirut that I raised with the Minister, and the woman whose disabled child is over 18 but still needs her parents. It is not my objective to rewrite the wider immigration rules for those who are not refugees; that is a different debate. I want to concentrate on those who are refugees. I recognise that new clause 1 is not the simplest way to do this because it is primary legislation when the matter would be dealt with better through immigration rules. Further changes to immigration rules would be needed alongside new clause 1 to ensure that the measure was focused on those fleeing conflict rather than wider family who are not refugees.

The new clause is an attempt to focus the Minister’s attention on the plight of families who are being separated all across Europe and need to be reunited. We should, out of compassion and as part of our support for refugees and for families and the family values that we hold dear, make more attempt to reunite families. It would be the best way for us to increase the number of refugees that we in Britain take. The Prime Minister set a target of 20,000 over the next five years, but we know that only 1,000 of those will be here before Christmas if the Government’s targets are met. They will need to go beyond that. The refugee crisis is not going away, and the most sensible, simple and fair way to provide more support for those who already have family here who could support them is for us in Britain to give them sanctuary.

We cannot make the debate on Syria simply one about security. It has to be about refugees and compassion as well. I know that the Government have done much to help refugees in the region, and I have praised them for doing so many times, but it is not an alternative to doing our bit to reunite families. There are so many ways in which the Government could do this; we have set out a series of ways in new clause 1 and in new clause 11. I have always sought to work on a cross-party basis and to build the biggest possible consensus. I urge the Minister in the same spirit to look carefully at what more he is able to do to help reunite some of the desperate refugee families who really need our help.

[Kelly Tolhurst]

I am sure that my hon. Friends and Opposition Members who served on the Public Bill Committee will agree that the debates were thoughtful and informative. I was extremely pleased to be a member of the Committee. Like my hon. Friends the Members for Castle Point (Rebecca Harris) and for North Dorset (Simon Hoare), in the past 12 months, as I have knocked on thousands of doors, I have found that immigration has been a big issue for my constituents. It has not been very often that I have knocked on a door and people have not raised this issue with me. I was therefore extremely pleased to be on the Bill Committee and to listen to the debate and hopefully increase my knowledge of certain aspects of the Bill.