EU: Asylum Seekers

Lord Judd Excerpts

Thursday 18th June 2015 Grand Committee

[Lord Judd (Lab)]

My Lords, in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Dykes, for giving us the opportunity to debate this vital subject, I join with him unreservedly in saying that the Italians should have the widest possible and most strongly expressed tribute from us all for the magnificent part that they have played on behalf of Europe and us all in the situation that confronts us.

Similarly—I say this with some joy, as a former Navy Minister—the Navy has behaved with outstanding sensitivity. In watching the interviews the humanity of the people doing the rescuing shines through; it just cannot be suppressed. That is Britain at its best. However, the noble Lord, Lord Marlesford, was right to remind us to have a global perspective on the response to refugee problems. When we look at the burden being carried by Jordan and by Lebanon and see what this is doing to the economy and the pressure that this is putting on local people in their situation, our record, which we love to talk about in terms of our humanity and outward-looking attitude in our past towards refugees, is in danger of being totally eclipsed by the generosity of countries such as those. We had better remind ourselves that we have to live up to our traditions if we are not to be eclipsed by those countries.

What do we do about it? The noble Lord, Lord Marlesford, was absolutely right: this is just a symptom of an accumulating global problem. What we are faced with now is likely to become child’s play by comparison with what is going to develop. So far as I recollect, we have not yet mentioned this afternoon that climate change is going to accentuate the movement of people. We will have not just conflict and economic pressures but climatic pressures leading to same thing. All this makes it obvious that we have to find international global solutions; we cannot find solutions on our own. By constantly trying to put a finger in the dyke, we are just destroying our chance for influence and leadership in finding international solutions. We are increasingly seen—I do not like saying this, but it is true for any of us who are involved in international affairs—as a mean, defensive, neurotic little country that is concerned only with keeping people out and is not positively engaged and playing a part in finding the solutions that are necessary. That is a tremendous challenge to us all.

I was glad that the noble Lord, Lord Dykes, allowed himself to digress, as he put it, because whenever we debate subjects such as this we should always have a refrain which we repeat: that if we look at our medicine, our science, our literature, our technology, our industry, our public services and our cultural life, we see that refugees have been a rich investment in the quality, the character and the standing of Britain in our history.