UK Opt-in to the Proposed Council Decision on the Relocation of Migrants within the EU (EUC Report)

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd July 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)]

My Lords, the debate we are having today and the report from the EU Home Affairs Sub-Committee shine a much-needed spotlight on a policy area where both the EU collectively and its individual member states are struggling to find an adequate response and, so far, falling well short of what is required. Although I am no longer any part of the sub-committee—I used to chair it, before the noble Baroness, Lady Prashar, who introduced the debate this afternoon with such eloquence and precision—I strongly endorse the views put forward in that report. Just in case anyone feels that if we go away on holiday and simply forget about it, the problem will somehow go away or diminish, I commend to their attention the Ditchley lecture on 11 July by António Guterres, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, who warned that the flow of asylum seekers towards Europe is sure to get worse before it gets better. That warning really does need to be taken seriously.

The Government and indeed the EU’s response so far has contained some valid elements. It is indeed good that rescue operations in the Mediterranean have been stepped up and that the Royal Navy is participating actively in those operations, thus reducing the appalling death toll of the spring and early summer. It is right to contemplate taking military action against the traffickers, although the implementation of that approach bristles with difficulties. It is right, too, to intensify police and judicial co-operation both within and outside the EU to clamp down on this inhuman trade. It is the case that helping developing countries to grow their own economies must be part of any solution to the problem of excessive economic migration. But having said that, to go on to assert, as the Government have done, that to handle genuine asylum seekers more expeditiously and humanely would be to encourage a pull factor, is deeply unconvincing—and that is a British understatement because one could use stronger words than that. Do we seriously believe that Syrians, Eritreans, Iraqis and Afghan families fleeing for their lives from persecution are motivated by the same factors as economic migrants? I cannot believe that we believe that.

I agree that the EU Commission has not helped the handling of this sensitive matter by ignoring the views of the April European Council and putting on the table a proposal for mandatory quotas. However appealing the emotional argument for such an approach, the Commission must have known that it would not be accepted. The Commission’s task is to be practical and not utopian. On this occasion, it failed that test.

The Government’s response, which has been to shelter behind the Justice and Home Affairs opt-out, was predictable, and so long as the proposal for mandatory quotas was on the table, I would argue that it was a legitimate one. But that seems to be no longer the case, and the June European Council opted for a voluntary approach, which has now been confirmed by the 20 July Justice and Home Affairs Council earlier this week. I believe that the Government should—there and then in June, when the mandatory approach was discarded and the voluntary approach was endorsed—have marked that shift in policy by making a voluntary offer to increase the number of asylum seekers from conflict zones whom we are prepared to admit from the current pitifully low level. To have done so would have been to show sensitivity to the problems that Greece and Italy are facing as a result of being in the front line of the wave of migrants and would have been no more than we are obliged to do under our international obligations towards refugees. That chance was missed, unfortunately, but I agree with the proposal before us today and with those who have preceded me in this debate in urging the Government not to opt out again but to participate in the voluntary scheme which is now taking shape.

Surely we need to be shaping policy in this area, not washing our hands of it like Pontius Pilate. As long as member states, and we are not alone in this, allow their policies on immigration to be dictated by scare stories in the press and by populist political agitation, we will fall short of finding an adequate response to what is a major humanitarian challenge of our times.

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)]

My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Hannay. I have had the honour of serving under him on several EU sub-committees and it has always been an instructive experience. Our views do not always coincide. The noble Lord has an Olympian view, honed by years of distinguished service to this country in the Foreign Office, while my more utilitarian views have been honed by years of experience in the rather more vulgar world of industry and commerce, so I am afraid that our views today do not coincide.

I was not a member of this sub-committee, but I have served on it before and was a member when, in the 2007-08 Session, it produced its report on FRONTEX, the EU’s external borders agency, under the chairmanship of my noble friend Lord Jopling. Then, as now, one could not fail to be appalled by the evidence of human misery: wretched men, women and children being plucked from the sea or staggering on to some Mediterranean beach. Then, as now, one could not fail to be appalled by the cynical behaviour of the people smugglers. I remember a particularly heartrending evidence session given by a senior officer from the immigration service of Malta. He described overloaded, unseaworthy boats being towed by an inflatable until the GPS showed that the boat was in the territorial waters of Malta. A cheap satellite phone would then be handed to one person on the unseaworthy boat with instructions to call a number, and when it was answered to say, “We are in Maltese territorial waters. Please rescue us”. The number, of course, was for the Maltese coastguard. By the time the coastguard turned up, the inflatable was, if not back in Africa, well its way there. So I would not want any Member of your Lordships’ House to doubt my sympathy for these unfortunate people.

Yet, while this Motion is entirely worthy and has been incredibly persuasively argued by the noble Baroness, Lady Prashar, I think it is misconceived. As the noble Lord, Lord Jay of Ewelme, said, this is a very complex problem and I believe that the Government are right not to opt into this measure or any part of it on any basis. I do so on two grounds. First, while I agree that the measure is entirely well intentioned, it addresses the symptoms, not the problem. As such, it risks exacerbating the problem rather than solving it. Secondly, while many noble Lords have referred to this country’s historical welcome to displaced persons and refugees, the situation now is that this country is experiencing, and will continue to experience for the next 20 years, a population explosion—unlike our continental European neighbours—with consequent strains on social cohesion. In that context, the relative population densities of different EU countries are a critical feature.

Let me deal with each of those in turn. I am afraid that I do not accept the assertion of the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, that there is no pull factor from allowing immigrants, refugees and displaced persons to enter the EU. I support what the Government say in paragraph 24 of the report. The challenge is that even at first quite small, limited numbers can begin the creation of what is known as an immigration superhighway. Immigration superhighways can now be created faster than ever by the prevalence of social media, which allow instantaneous communication about possibilities and opportunities. The more desperate the people, the quicker the highway emerges.

That takes me to my concern about the statement in paragraph 29 that this event is “exceptional and temporary”. I am afraid I have difficulty in accepting that argument. I would very much like to see evidence to support the argument in paragraph 31 that somehow “international protection” will not encourage a steady drift west or north in search of a better life or merely to avoid persecution, poverty and threat to life or limb. However neat this may appear to the Commission in Brussels, displaced persons are not so easily segmented or clearly put into one box or another.

There is another political, rather more stark reason why this proposal is misguided. The presence of these unfortunate people puts pressure on the Governments of the countries involved to police their borders effectively. If there is a hope—a possibility—that arrivals can be passed on to the rest of the EU, I fear that the political and operational focus will inevitably diminish. The numbers, as other noble Lords have said, are staggering. The noble Lord, Lord Jay, referred to 10 million displaced persons in Syria, 3 million in Iraq and many more in Sudan, Eritrea, Somalia and other north African and Saharan countries. Any action, however trivial, that suggests that the EU might open its door even a fraction could create population movement on a scale hitherto undreamed of.

So, do I think that we have to leave those unfortunate people to their fate? Of course not. The Government have made a courageous and principled commitment to spending 0.7% of our GDP on overseas aid and have ring-fenced it. The economic power with our international partners—I entirely support the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, when she said that we ought to make sure that everybody does their bit—needs to be deployed to improve the living and economic conditions of these displaced people at source, as does our military power to offer protection to displaced people as well as to destroy the boats and generally inhibit the operations of people smugglers wherever they may operate.

I turn to the second reason why I believe that the Government need to keep control of our borders and should not take part in any relocation scheme. Noble Lords have made moving statements. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Peterborough, and others, talked about the contribution that refugees have made to our country in the past. This is a very small and very crowded country. Furthermore, it is a crowded country undergoing a population explosion. Last year our population rose by 500,000 people—1,400 people a day. A small town or large village is being put on the map of Britain every week. If we wish to house these people to the same standard that we enjoy ourselves—I assume we wish to do that, with 2.3 people per dwelling—we need to build 600 dwellings a day. That is one every two and a half minutes, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. That is without building the hospitals, the schools, the roads and other infrastructure that are required. That is not all. The mid projection from the Office for National Statistics suggests that this will continue for the next 20 years. By 2035 it is estimated that we will have a further 8 million people in this country, equivalent to three cities the size of Greater Manchester. To house them, we will have to build 3.4 million dwellings—building a house every three minutes for the next 20 years.

The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Peterborough referred to social strains. This will put huge social strains on our country. Some of those strains, I fear, are beginning to make themselves felt already. We should not add to those strains as this proposal suggests, not only because it would be unfair to our settled population, of whatever race, colour or creed, but no less significantly because, when social cohesion breaks down, it is the poor, the disadvantaged and the recently arrived who suffer the most. If the European Union wishes to proceed with these plans, it is surely essential that existing countries’ population densities need to be taken into account. This is not mentioned in paragraph 11 of the report.

I described England as a crowded country. We have just overtaken the Netherlands as the most densely populated country in Europe, with more than 400 people per square kilometre. The Netherlands has 393 people per square kilometre. However, Germany has 233—about 60% of our density—and France 111, about 25% of our density. If the EU wishes to proceed with this measure, these countries must surely be the destination for the 40,000 people.

To conclude, I recognise that these are stark realities and I, for one, do not always feel comfortable spelling them out, but the 40,000 are only the symptom of the problem. We need to tackle its roots.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

I apologise for interrupting but I would have thought the noble Lord might recognise that at the Council meeting on Monday of this week, the French and Germans accepted numbers in the region of 10,000 each under this scheme, and these are countries where there are very active political forces urging them—like us—to accept no one at all.

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts]

My Lords, I did not expect to get through this speech without the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, wishing to draw attention to the advantages of the European Union. The fact is that those countries are immeasurably less densely populated than the United Kingdom. France, at 111 people per square kilometre, has 25% of our population density, and we have to bear that in mind. Our settled population—and when I say “settled population”, I mean people of whatever race, colour or creed—has its own position and we are in danger of—