Nationality and Borders Bill

Debate between Lord Dubs and Lord Green of Deddington

Committee stage
Tuesday 8th February 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Green of Deddington (CB)]

My Lords, I think that it is perhaps time for a different view from this side of the Committee. I will briefly deal with Amendments 112 and 113.

Amendment 112 refers to “Refugee family reunion”. It is a wide-ranging amendment, and I suggest that it is unnecessary and not very wise. We already have provisions for the family members of refugees to come here. As others have mentioned, these allow partners and children under 18 of those granted refugee status or humanitarian protection to join them here, provided that they formed part of the family unit before they left their own country. That seems a reasonable basis for this provision. Of course, the family members do not receive refugee status themselves, so their leave will expire at the same time as that of the sponsor. But individuals on such visas are allowed to work, study and have recourse to public funds, which also seems entirely reasonable.

Indeed—I will save the Minister a task—we have granted visas to more than 60,000 family members of refugees since 2010. Since 2015, over half of those were to children. This is already a very substantial move in that direction. But widening the criteria still further would, of itself, massively increase those numbers and add still further to the pull factors drawing people to the English Channel, a route that has very little support among the public.

There is a very strong case for not widening these refugee routes. In the real world, we simply do not have the necessary infrastructure, service capacity, housing or school places. Many refugees are being put into the poorest parts of the UK. In this context, the Home Secretary said to a House of Lords committee on 27 October last year:

“We simply do not have the infrastructure or the accommodation.”


A Member of the other House said of his area:

“The impact on housing pressure at local level could cause further tensions if there is resentment about refugees receiving housing assistance at a time of acute … housing shortage.”—[Official Report, Commons, 27/4/21; col. 40WH.]


In setting our arrangements for refuges and their families, we must surely give due consideration to their impact on our own vulnerable communities.

[Lord Dubs (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. I just put this to him: if children are coming to join family members here, the norm would be that the family member has accommodation to provide for them, so the argument about housing does not apply to that group of people.

Nationality and Borders Bill

Debate between Lord Dubs and Lord Green of Deddington

Lords Hansard - Part 1 & Committee stage
Thursday 3rd February 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Green of Deddington (CB)]

No; it is very simple —too simple for the noble Baroness—but it would mean that we do not need huge amounts of security in order to keep people where we put them. I hope that Government will take powers to do something on those lines. I do not think what they are now proposing will work, and I think it would be even worse if some of the proposals we have heard today came into effect.

[Lord Dubs (Lab)]

My Lords, I would not want this whole debate to turn on the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Green. All I would say is that his suggestion that people should be kept in a form of virtual detention and penalised if they happen to leave it is surely unacceptable. I am afraid that I do not accept the thrust of his arguments anyway. If he looks at the figures, he will also find that, although more people came across the Channel by boat in the last year or so, the numbers have not increased all that much, compared with those who came on the back of lorries before. The numbers have actually gone down a bit.

[Lord Green of Deddington (CB)]

That is correct. If the two are added together, it averages about 40,000 a year over the last eight or 10 years. The problem now is the publicity surrounding all this, which makes it more difficult. Also, these numbers could easily double, as the Home Office says, and then we are in a new situation, going back to the early 1960s when it ran completely out of control.

[Lord Dubs (Lab)]

I do not want to pursue the point, because it is diverting us from the particular amendments, which I support. I say at the outset that the Minister has the advantage that, having been able to look at the Joint Committee on Human Rights reports on this, she will know exactly the quotes and arguments that we are going to use. It will be no surprise to her at all. She knows exactly what we are on about. I am certainly speaking as a member of that committee.

Before that, perhaps I could pay tribute to the Kent Refugee Action Network. During the pandemic—at its height—when the issue of Napier barracks arose, it drew our attention to what was going on. I am sorry I could not go with the right reverend Prelate on his recent visit, but at the time of the pandemic, we were not able to go on visits and I am sure the Minister was not able to, either. She gave us a version of what was going on in the barracks which frankly was disproved by the local people on the ground, who told us that the conditions were bad, and that people with Covid were mixed up in dormitories with people who did not have Covid. I am afraid the Minister at that time appeared to be misinformed as to the situation there. All these issues were raised at the time. I cannot remember how long ago it was. We had quite a long earlier debate.

I do not want to go over the ground that other noble Lords have covered. The Joint Committee on Human Rights looked at this. We have some good quotes from Bail for Immigration Detainees and from Médecins Sans Frontières. I will not quote those, but I do want to quote paragraph 91 of the JCHR report:

“It is imperative that the Government learns from the poor treatment of asylum seekers housed in former military barracks. If accommodation centres are to be used to house those awaiting asylum decisions and appeals or awaiting removal from the UK the conditions must ensure that residents are free to come and go, treated with respect, provided with adequate access to healthcare and legal advice and not prevented from mixing with the rest of society”.


I will say one other thing. At the time this issue arose, the Home Secretary said that the barracks were used by the British Army and asked why we were complaining. That was wrong in a number of respects. First, it was years previously that the Army had used the barracks. Secondly, they were not mixing up people with Covid with other people. If the conditions were not adequate now, they were not adequate for the Army then—but to use that as an excuse, and say, “It’s good enough for refugees because the Army used it 10 or 15 years earlier” seems an unacceptable argument.

I am sorry the Home Office has been put in this position. I welcome what the Kent Refugee Action Network has been doing to support refugees in Kent generally, to support refugees in the barracks and to campaign on the same arguments that are characterised by these amendments.