Refugees (Family Reunion) Bill [HL]

Lord Alderdice Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 15th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Alderdice (LD)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend on bringing forward this short Bill. There are three reasons why I stand to support her and the Bill. The first is that, when I was growing up, I had a sense of pride in our country because I was aware that people had come as refugees, particularly during and after the Second World War. They had been welcomed into our country and, as other noble Lords have said, they contributed to it greatly. That was all positive. There was a sense that this was a welcoming country—one that people from other parts of the world could look to as a place of safety that would nourish and care for them—and that we as a people were doing something good and right by providing that kind of national home.

We have in recent years, for understandable pressures, changed the attitude. We are pulling up the drawbridge and instead of being an open place that has a reputation for being welcoming we are seen as a place that is hard to get to and, when you do arrive, you are no longer welcome. I do not advocate the kind of open door policy that Chancellor Merkel embarked upon—warmly but ill advisedly—because it has had adverse effects in all kinds of ways. However, I fear that our country is being infected by turning away from the other and into itself and losing its reputation and something of its soul. That is the first reason why I support the Bill. It is a sign, a symbol, an indication that there is a spirit in this country which is open and welcoming for those who need a place to come for safety.

The second reason is the practical experience I have had over a number of years of the splitting up of marriages because one partner was able to live here and the other could not. People have said, “Well, if they really want to live together the partner who has the right to live here should go elsewhere”. That is easily said. A recent example is that of a bright, capable young woman who has been given a contract by Penguin for a book that she has written. She is a British citizen, her parents are British citizens and she lives in this part of the world. Some years ago she married a young man but he cannot come here for a number of reasons to do with our regulations and rules. So she has gone to live with him, but every time she has gone she has fallen seriously ill and ended up in hospital. They have tried again and again but have been unable to get access for him. So she went back out again. I received an email from her a few days ago to say that she was back in hospital. She had not been in touch with me because she nearly died last week with typhoid and malaria. The truth of the human stories, of the splitting up of marriages and relationships, is serious and we need to regard it with due care.

The third reason, the one which moves me most, is the situation of the children. As the director of the Centre for the Resolution of Intractable Conflict I run a group to provide supervision, advice and guidance for younger people—although increasingly everyone seems younger to me—who are working for NGOs, the Foreign Office and organisations where they are experiencing situations of conflict. They are wondering how to manage and cope emotionally themselves and how to understand the dynamics of what is happening.

A member of that group for a time was a young Syrian lawyer who had spent much of her life working in the Middle East for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. When the situation arose in Lesbos and Greece the UNHCR called upon her, saying, “We need you. Can you come? We need everyone who can”. She went out to Lesbos and every couple of days I would get photographs and emails of what was happening there. After that the situation got worse. As the news got less for us, the news got worse for them. She was asked to go to Athens to work with Greek children. Why? Because there were so many refugee children in Greece that the services could not cope with not only the incomers but with Greek children. Everything was beginning to break down in another EU country. We have a responsibility to those children as EU citizens as well as to those who come in.

Then she began to tell me about the hundreds, indeed thousands, of children who are on the road and being used and abused—inevitably so. It is almost impossible for them to find a way of surviving without ending up in the hands of either organised or disorganised crime. So when I hear people saying that we do not want to go down this road because it will only encourage people to come, I understand their concern. However, the fact is that they are already coming—they already have come—and if we do not provide the opportunity for them to live in a family circumstance, we ensure that they go into a life of crime. We are making it impossible for them to grow up in normal families of their own. As a psychiatrist I am not naive about families—they are not always perfect—but they are a lot better than the reality of the experience of these young people who are already in our country and our continent.

We should not allow ourselves to be pushed away from attending to that by the notion that in passing legislation we are opening the doors—we are not. We are setting down rules to ensure that those children who are already here are not condemned to a life of crime because it is the only way that they can survive. That is the responsibility that this Bill is trying to address, and that is why I give it my full support.