Unaccompanied Children

Kirsty Blackman Excerpts

Tuesday 19th April 2016 Westminster Hall

[Kirsty Blackman (Aberdeen North) (SNP)]

I thank the hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes) for bringing this important debate to Parliament, and I thank you, Ms Vaz, for chairing this debate. I hope I can get through my speech very quickly.

I will talk about the experience of refugee children who do not have parents to care for them, but first I want to talk about the situation with unaccompanied children who are given the opportunity to come to the UK and the Government’s record on that. To be clear, I am referring to Governments of all colours; I am not in any way making a party political point. The Government have pledged to do more, and I am glad, because their record up to now has been pretty abysmal. When unaccompanied children come to the UK, they are placed in local authority care. Local authorities and communities do their best to care for them, but as soon as they turn 18 the situation changes drastically: they can apply for naturalisation, and too many are turned away. The only place they have ever found safety and comfort turns them away.

We give these children a home and a family. They make friends and learn English. Then, when they turn 18, we send them back to the war zone they came from. Between 2008 and 2012, we sent nearly 2,000 children back to Afghanistan. In the same period, we sent 345 children back to Iraq and at least 22 back to the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In 2009 and 2010, we sent back children who were stateless. I do not even know how that works. They were stateless. No state was accepting responsibility for those children, and we sent them out of our country. A bairn who comes to our country as an unaccompanied minor and has no rights anywhere else is refused the right to stay after they turn 18. That is inhumane.

Things must change, and I am therefore pleased that we are having this debate today. The Scottish National party is calling for the UK Government to ensure that all separated children are allocated an independent legal guardian. I am glad that that point was made earlier. It is important that the kids have a voice and someone able to fight their side and navigate our incredibly complicated immigration system. We would like the UK Government to backtrack on the provisions in the Immigration Bill that discriminate against former looked-after children.

I will now turn my attention to the circumstances that displaced children and young people find themselves in throughout Europe, the middle east and other parts of the world. The other night, my four-year-old woke up having had a nightmare. I went in and gave him a hug and he went back to sleep. He had all his favourite toys around him. He had his own pyjamas on and was in his own bed. He knew that his mum and dad were just along the corridor, able to come in and give him the comfort and support he needed. The horror and terror that unaccompanied children must experience is unimaginable. Refugee children are waking from their nightmares and finding that real life is worse. Every day, every hour, displaced children are hoping and praying for comfort and safety. How can we, when we have the means to help them, justify leaving them in that situation?

I went to visit Kittybrewster primary school recently and the children there were talking to me about refugees. They were concerned for refugee children. They are passionate young people, and they grilled me at length about why the Government were not doing more to help children who are like them, but who are alone in a foreign country. They wanted to know what I was doing to help. They wanted to know what Members and the Government were doing to help. They wanted to know how dropping bombs on people in Syria would help to improve the lives of the many thousands of children who find themselves homeless and alone as a result of conflict.

Why, when we have more than enough, are we do not doing more to help those who have nothing? The Government have not been flexible enough. I do not think we should be removing emotion from the debate. We should be thinking about these children as young human beings whom we have a responsibility to help. We need to be doing everything we can to take action now. We should be helping people with compassion and humanity and not simply considering these youngsters as numbers.