Refugee Family Reunion

Lindsay Hoyle Excerpts

Thursday 20th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Andy Slaughter]

I fully intend to keep the next debate going until 5 o’clock, and I hope that the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) will join me in that ambition.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Lindsay Hoyle)]

That is also subject to the Chair’s agreement.

[Stuart C. McDonald]

I certainly do not doubt their ability to do that, Mr Deputy Speaker. In conclusion, the continued blocking of this Bill is disrespectful to Parliament, but more importantly it is disrespectful and damaging to our refugee community. A fitting conclusion to Refugee Week would be for the Government to listen and to reunite more families, which is exactly the instruction that Parliament has given.

--- Later in debate ---

[Angus Brendan MacNeil]

I welcome the tone of this debate; it has been absolutely fantastic. By comparison with the debate on 16 March last year, there have been no voices speaking against or running up false flags. We are trying to do something that is very unambitious—we are only trying to catch up with 25 other European countries that have no difficulty operating the modest change that we are trying to bring in. As my hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald) said, people are using dinghies and so on to cross the channel because they cannot get here legally, and we are just trying to open up the legal avenues.

I thank the many Members who have contributed, including the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill); I thank him for his knowledge, what he added to the debate and what he told us about Chislehurst and his honourable past. The hon. Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams) gave a great, wide-ranging speech. The hon. Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter) pointed out that we should not have any need for this debate. The hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate (Bambos Charalambous) related the story of his trip to the jungle. I mentioned in my speech that when we meet people, it opens up another avenue of thought. People are in the jungle because they have changed their religion—in the instance he raised, they had become Christian—and have to escape for the protection of their own lives.

The hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Gill Furniss) made a very interesting point about the case that she is dealing with involving the woman who cannot bring her children over, and I hope that the Home Office will have been listening. I do not think I have interacted with the hon. Member for Newport West (Ruth Jones) before, but she is certainly following in the footsteps of the great Paul Flynn, who was a friend of mine in the House, and I welcome the humanitarian note that she struck. The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), who demonstrated his excellent Gaelic pronunciation, gave a speech, again, driven by his humanity.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East for making very good points, and I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North (Patrick Grady) for his intervention, in which he said that we have the time in this Parliament for a lot of things to happen. I take the Minister’s point about an instruction to the business managers, who are just few yards outside the door, to enable this to happen. I hope that the business managers in the Conservative Whips Office are listening to this microphone and making sure that that happens.

I want to mention Jalal from Afghanistan, who spoke at our event on Tuesday about what it is like being a young refugee. He spoke very well in, I think, his third or fourth language, including about the difficulties that young men, in particular, face and how they can fall through the gaps. There is a lot to be done and yet to do, but we are only trying to do something very little at the moment.

Finally, I appreciate Members’ very good efforts to say the name of my constituency. I sometimes do not find it easy to say the name of Welsh constituencies, but that gives us a little reminder, by serendipity, of the language challenge that is presented to many refugees. We only have to learn two or three words to say “Na h-Eileanan an Iar” but most Members here did it very well, albeit with concentration. I thank them for that and for their contributions, and I will let you move on, Mr Deputy Speaker, as I see that you are very anxious to do so.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Lindsay Hoyle)]

That was the longest two minutes I have ever seen.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House notes that 20 June is World Refugee Day; further notes that, with record levels of global displacement across the world, many refugee families have been separated by war and persecution; welcomes that in 2018 the UK granted 5,806 family reunion visas to partners and children of refugees in the UK; and calls on the Government to introduce reforms to family reunion rules to ensure that the close relatives of all refugees in the UK have safe and legal pathways to reunite with their families in the UK.