Syrian Refugees: Resettlement

Lord Harrington of Watford Excerpts

Wednesday 27th January 2016 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Refugees (Richard Harrington)]

As always, it is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Faversham and Mid Kent (Helen Whately) for securing the debate and for her contribution. The Opposition, in all their forms—Her Majesty’s loyal Opposition, the Scottish National party and everyone else—have been very helpful in everything that the Government have done on the Syrian resettlement programme. That does not mean that the Opposition have not been critical, but I think we all realise that we all have exactly the same intention.

However, ladies and gentlemen of the jury—if this were a jury, as in the former profession of the hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) —I am a little bit off my normal form, owing to the shock of being complimented by the Chair of the Select Committee on Home Affairs, the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz). That stopped me concentrating for a moment.

[Helen Whately]

I want to reiterate something that the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) said, which I may have overlooked in my comments. During my research for the debate, I heard so many positive things about the Home Office and the Minister’s work. He certainly deserves the praise that he has received.

[Richard Harrington]

I thank my hon. Friend for her comments. If I could receive such comments during the rest of my political career, I would be fortunate. We have very little time. With permission, I will attempt to answer most of the questions that have been asked, but if by chance I miss anything, I would be happy to discuss it privately with any Member of this House. Quite a few of the questions were grouped together, so I will try to summarise them.

There has been a bit of a misunderstanding about local authorities and the criteria for deciding where refugees should be settled. I have a lot of respect for the hon. Member for Dudley North (Ian Austin)—we are both very interested in holocaust affairs and are involved in the Holocaust Educational Trust, of which I am a trustee—and we agree on most things. However, the list of people settled under the asylum programme is fundamentally different from the system that is used in the resettlement programme, and that is the reason for the confusion between him and my hon. Friend the Member for Faversham and Mid Kent. Local authorities have come forward to help in many areas, such as Ashford in Kent. I pay tribute to the leader of Ashford Borough Council, who passed around a video to other local authorities saying how welcome refugees are in Ashford. The council has resettled quite a lot of families.

[Ian Austin]

Will the Minister give way?

[Richard Harrington]

I am sorry, but I really do not have time, because we have only got five minutes and I have got loads of things to say. Participation in the resettlement scheme is voluntary for local authorities. I would like to cover the finance point, because one of the very good contributions from the Scottish Members had a slight mistake in it. It is not just year 1 funding that has been arranged; there is a full programme for years 2 to 5. I am happy to go into detail in writing or to talk to hon. Members about it. Suffice it to say, within the time available, that most local authority leaders are quite satisfied with the funding, because years 2 to 5 are provided for.

As far as local authorities are concerned, the Government are conscious of the fact that settlement requires more than housing. That housing is provided predominantly by private landlords and paid for through local authorities, but with Government funds, deliberately so as not to interfere with the housing stock in those areas. In addition, each area is responsible for programmes to welcome people, introduce them to the local community and ensure that they register with doctors, schools and so on. I mention that because one of the faults of previous such programmes was that people were housed but forgotten about, and we are determined that that will not happen. Those are valid points to raise.

The Chair of the Home Affairs Committee made many erudite points, one of which was to ask what the Government were going to do about all the offers of spare rooms and shelter. He mentioned the Archbishop of Canterbury, whom I was with this morning—

[Keith Vaz]

Oh.

[Richard Harrington]

Indeed, and your name was mentioned—not your name, Mr Gray, but the right hon. Gentleman’s. I apologise for not mentioning your name to the Archbishop, Mr Gray; I know that you know him very well.

On a serious point, we cannot take up the kind offers of spare rooms in people’s houses because we are not interested in providing temporary accommodation to refugees. Our programme is intended to settle people where they will live, if not permanently, for the foreseeable future. However, that does not mean that we are not using all those offers of help. I discussed the matter this morning with the Archbishop. He is, by the way, in touch with Lambeth Council, and I am sorry that the right hon. Member for Leicester East has such a low opinion of Labour councils and their housing departments that he thinks that he would not be treated properly.

Putting that to one side for the moment, we are considering lots of other things through community sponsorship so that those kind offers can be used. One example is mentoring people into jobs, which is being trialled in a scheme in Bradford at the moment. Another is twinning families with other families, who can help by taking them to job interviews and English language lessons, which we are encouraging. We are doing lots of community sponsorship things—I would be happy to go into them on another occasion, but I am conscious of the time—so the good will of those people is absolutely not being turned away.

I will leave the right hon. Gentleman’s running commentary points for the moment, because there may be another occasion to discuss that. He said that it was very important that we include the diaspora of Syrians who already live here. I met all the groups during my first few weeks in office and I asked them to form one umbrella organisation, which they have done. I met some of them yesterday, and I will meet more of them tomorrow, to make sure that they are used in all the areas where they have people. A slight problem is that they are concentrated in certain areas and not present in many areas where refugees are going, but they are being very co-operative.

The point about religious minorities is particularly important, because there has been a general belief that our system of taking people from the UNHCR, using the vulnerability criteria, is all well and good, but that some people—particularly Christians, but also other minorities—have been left out. I am determined that that will not happen. There is one rule on which I think the Government have every right to be inflexible, and that is that people have to register with the UNHCR, because it is the only way in which we can work out the vulnerability points, such as health and all the other things that we deal with. However, I have asked the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Catholic Bishop Patrick Lynch, whom I met last week, and every other body that we work with to give us evidence of places where there are pockets of people who are not registered. The Department for International Development is funding the UNHCR to provide outreach staff to register those people. I am pleased to tell my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes) that on meeting a Catholic bishop who came back from Jordan last week, I was told for the first time that there are green shoots, with more evidence of Christians registering. I want to make it clear that the Government have no policy of discriminating against Christians or anybody else, because what we are interested in is vulnerability.

As far as the contributions from Scottish Members are concerned—I am sorry to group them together, but there is not time to go through their individual contributions—I pay tribute to the way in which the Scottish Government, the Scottish local authorities and the Home Office have worked together. It is a very good model for democracy, because no one cares about who is in which party or about trying to score points off each other, and the end product has been extremely good. I cannot stress that enough, and I can say that because I have experienced it myself.

This is a very complex issue. A lot of people have mentioned the 3,000 children, and have said that 20,000 refugees is not enough. It is certainly true that hundreds of thousands could be picked out. I would like to stress two points in my remaining time. First, hon. and right hon. Members must remember that the 20,000 is a small part of our overall humanitarian policy. Most of our work is in the countries adjoining Syria, such as Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey, and I think that this country can be proud of that work. One Member mentioned Germany. Germany has a lot of migrants, but compared with Germany, we do a lot of work on the ground on matters such as accommodation and health. It works both ways. There has been a lot of talk about the children, and all I can say in the few seconds I have left is that the Prime Minister is considering the situation, and I believe we can expect an announcement shortly. I am sorry that I cannot give any more information than that, but the points have been very well made.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the resettlement of Syrian refugees.