EU Asylum Reform Package

Kirsten Oswald Excerpts

Monday 19th December 2016 General Committees

[Mr Goodwill]

We do not expect any funding that has already been agreed to be affected by our not opting into the regulation. The UK has already been allocated funding from the asylum, migration and integration fund through to the financial year 2019. In any event, the UK may have left the European Union before the regulation comes into effect. No EU funding has been allocated to the Syrian vulnerable person resettlement scheme, which is our primary way of delivering our obligations for resettlement, since the scheme’s expansion.

[Kirsten Oswald (East Renfrewshire) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Evans. The Minister has made it clear a couple of times that he does not think he will change his views, but will listen none the less. He emphasised that his view was that, on these matters, we should be sovereign, and that his Government would not wish to opt in, and he asked for retrospective agreement again. We also have the matter of premature approval and a logjam to deal with. Even though we have not finished this debate, he seems confident that he will not change his views. How can we hold the Government to account if this is how the procedures and systems work?

[Mr Goodwill]

I repeat my apology, but I would certainly be interested to learn, perhaps from a supplementary question from the Scottish National party, whether it believes that we should have opted into any of the four measures.

We in this House have the power to pass legislation, so even if we do not opt into measures, we can take our own approach to some of them. Indeed, looking at our successful roll-out of the Syrian vulnerable person resettlement scheme and the other schemes in the area, as well as our long-standing gateway and mandate scheme, I believe that we are stepping up to the mark with our responsibilities. EU legislation would not add anything in that regard.

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[Kirsten Oswald]

Like my hon. Friend, I do not plan to say a great deal, but it is worth putting on the record that this is a very important issue. Personally, I am not entirely comfortable hearing the Minister referencing “Brexit” and “logjams” while he explains why we are not looking at this issue closely. As my hon. Friend said, there are a number of important aspects that warranted further debate; I will not labour them, but it is sensible to discuss them rather than to have the situation we are dealing with today, whereby the Government have already brought matters to the Chamber.

The proposals are a good start in terms of our common asylum system. There are details that would have borne further discussion and scrutiny. However, the unprecedented scale of what we are dealing with means that we should do much better and that the UK Government should commit much further; there certainly is not a commitment to an appropriate number of refugees, in our opinion. People expect us to deal with this situation differently; I think that they are very shocked by the crisis that we are dealing with, and people want to help.

I appreciate the Minister’s remarks on how we have got here, but as my hon. Friend said, we are talking about an international crisis, we need an international response and it is disappointing that we do not have the opportunity to input to that process.