European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Judd Excerpts

Committee: 7th sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Wednesday 14th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Clancarty (CB)]

My Lords, Amendment 204 seeks to maintain the rights of, and opportunities for, young people to continue to travel, work and study within Europe, and to ensure that those rights are not diminished. I am grateful for the support of the noble Baronesses, Lady Royall of Blaisdon and Lady Humphreys, and the noble Lord, Lord Judd. One of the reasons I tabled this amendment is that so little has been said about the effect of Brexit on young people’s opportunities, either by the Government or in debate. Young people are the future of this country, yet their future is being almost entirely ignored.

My fear is that, far from the country getting a deal that includes young people, they will become the collateral damage of a hard Brexit, because it is they who will be affected by Brexit more than anyone else. There are various reasons for this, and I will come on to why I believe this is the case. At present we are all treated equally within the EU, young people included. The right to free movement is entirely democratic—but the introduction of any kind of visa system or work permits will change this, as a visa system is by definition a class system. Celebrities, the rich and the lucky will be waved through airports, and established professionals will have a harder time of it, but those at the bottom of the pile will be the young, who are starting out on their careers and who wish to explore other countries and cultures and expand their horizons through work and/or study abroad—the very people for whom free movement within Europe means the most. This includes young people from poorer backgrounds, for whom a flight within Europe is more realistic than one further afield. Those who voted leave surely did not do so to create new hierarchies, new elites.

Some people have expressed the view in this House that things will not be so bad, and that we are worrying about this too much, unless someone is going to work in Europe. However, we cannot take work out of the equation. For many young people, travel and work are inextricably bound up. They are part of the same thing—that experience of exploring their own continent. This is true for the working class and the less well-off, who may need to find work out there to pay for their stay. Thousands of Britons work across Europe in all kinds of temporary jobs—as couriers, doing maintenance work, as waiters, working in bars and much else—in addition, of course, to the permanent jobs young people may be offered, very possibly as the result of an extended stay.

If young people lose these rights, not only will they lose this essential flexibility of travel, they will also be subjected to a double whammy, because every young person who is a citizen of any EEA country, as they will retain these rights and opportunities to a considerable extent, will have an immediate and substantial advantage over young British people in obtaining work abroad, whether permanent or temporary. I have heard recently of someone whose parents we know: a working-class 20 year-old boy who has been told not even to bother to apply for a job in in the kitchens of a top hotel in Paris, because of the uncertainties of Brexit. The effect of Brexit on young people is already happening.

As I have said, it is not true that only the young middle classes make use of the EU. It is worth reiterating the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Brown of Cambridge, in Committee on 26 February, about our relative lack of international student mobility within Europe, particularly among young people from less advantaged groups. But if we start to shut down all opportunities for everyone, including Erasmus+, young people from less privileged backgrounds will again be hurt most, and most immediately, as it will become more difficult for them in particular to take advantage of a system with more restrictions, increased costs and greater bureaucracy in both work and study opportunities, if those opportunities even exist then. We must surely make greater headway in the other direction. I will not say very much about Erasmus+ as we have had a very full debate on this topic. However, in our debate on Erasmus+ in Committee, the Minister said he would reflect on what was said. Has he been able to reflect on that further in the last couple of weeks?

The goal of intercultural skills, which Erasmus+ holds dear, is surely an effect, at its best, of not just study but travel and work abroad as well, with the contact that young people make with others. This is hugely important culturally and has, of course, educational and commercial implications in the exchange of ideas as young people bring those experiences back from Europe. Encouraging young people to go abroad in Europe is good for the country.

Finally, it is worth reminding ourselves that the Ipsos MORI analysis of the results of the referendum estimated that for 18 to 34 year-olds the remain vote beat the leave vote significantly in every class of society. It seems clear that most young people from whatever class feel European in a way that many older people do not. This is not then just about being young and wishing to explore beyond one’s own country; it is a break between generations and, in that sense alone, to deny these rights is culturally a huge backward step.

This amendment sets down the red lines that many young people would not want to see crossed, and I hope the Government will accept it. I beg to move.

[Lord Judd (Lab)]

My Lords, I warmly endorse this amendment to which I have put my name. The feeling of dismay and disappointment among young people is hard to overestimate and has been put to me very forcefully. The Government keep saying that we are going to be an international nation whatever happens on Brexit, and that they put our international participation at the forefront of their considerations. It seems to me a very strange way to start if we in any way foreshorten the much appreciated opportunity to enjoy travel, study and the rest abroad, and to bring that experience back to Britain.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss]

My Lords, I support this amendment. My eldest grandson is about to leave university. He is incandescent with anger that he is about to be deprived of the right to look for a job anywhere across Europe when he leaves university. He is typical of a large number of young people coming out of university, colleges of further education and school who want the opportunity to travel, and, as my noble friend Lord Clancarty has suggested, the opportunity to do something outside their own country, to move away. However, that is something they are in real danger of losing with this change that we are about to have. The Government must really listen to these young people.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Stroud (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to this amendment, moved by the noble Lord, Lord Dubs. Our exit from the European Union presents us with a unique opportunity to define, in our own terms, the country we want to be. This nation is and always has been generous and open-minded towards refugees and has offered a home in times of trouble. From the Huguenots to the Belgians and Jewish refugees, we have a strong tradition of welcoming those who seek shelter. As a child, I can remember my own mother working as a nurse to welcome the Ugandan Asian refugees, and then later the Vietnamese boat people. This seemed only natural to me, given that my own father had been evacuated as a child to Canada during the war. This tradition is something which I hope, regardless of one’s views on Brexit or the European Union, we can all agree on.

In the period January 2016 to September 2017, the UK welcomed a total of 9,897 refugees, approximately half of whom were female and half were children. We can and we should do more, and we should seek to keep open and available every channel by which people are able to safely seek asylum. Dublin III is one of the ways in which respect for family life and unaccompanied minors’ best interests are kept at the heart of the asylum process. For some 300,000 unaccompanied child refugees, the risks of trafficking and forced prostitution or forced labour are extremely high. We know that in the Mediterranean, more than 75% of the 1,600 14 to 16 year-olds arriving in Italy reported being held against their will or forced to work. This staggering statistic is absolutely why we should be working to ensure that there are accessible, legal routes such as Dublin III, which allow children to apply for asylum safely from the country they are in, and not be forced to take dangerous journeys to join their families.

For children and adults fleeing conflict, the best place for them to be is with family members. This offers the best possible chance for them to thrive and rebuild their lives post trauma. The co-operation that Dublin III offers aids this but, as we all know, the Dublin conventions are only a small part of the story, and while the co-operation should remain, it is one strand of a much wider issue.

From the Calais operation, just 29 of the 769 children who were transferred to the UK came from the Dublin regulation route, and in 2016 just 355 people were transferred under this route. To date, the UK has taken in 10,538 refugees from Syria—just over half of the number we committed to resettle by 2020. We have so far welcomed around 220 children under Section 67 of the Immigration Act, which my noble friend Lord Dubs fought so hard to obtain: less than 1/10th of the original number committed to. Going forward, is this the sort of country we want to be?

Brexit is an opportunity to re-evaluate our priorities as a country and refocus on the country we want to be. Being an open nation with a generous welcome for those in need of our shelter should be a key part of that. I understand the limitations of Dublin III. But I call on my noble friend the Minister to clarify and confirm in this Committee that, post March 2019, the Government’s new and independent approach to refugees would guarantee that those who benefited under the old system would still benefit under the new, and that no restriction would be put in place preventing those in need from being reunited with their families.

[Lord Judd]

My Lords, I would like to thank the noble Baroness, Lady Stroud, for that speech—not just for the speech but because it was the voice of compassionate, socially engaged conservatism, which I have always respected. May that tradition in the Conservative Party reassert itself. It is desperately needed at this juncture in our history. What the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, said about the legal situation was also a powerful argument, which the Government must answer. Are we going to strip what have been legal rights away?

In the context of this Bill, we debate from time to time what sort of Britain we want to be, and the noble Baroness, Lady Stroud, was absolutely right. I share completely her view about the sort of Britain we should be. I want us to be a Britain in which the world sees “Compassion” in capital letters in all our approach to public affairs. We seem to have lost that and I want to see it reasserted. I thank my noble friend Lord Dubs for having moved this amendment. His consistent and tireless work on this issue challenges us all. If we talk about family and its importance in society, this is an issue which we can no longer prevaricate about.

[Lord Hope of Craighead]

My Lords, I believe that the noble Baroness, Lady Stroud, was absolutely right to say that respect for family life lies at the heart of this matter. That in particular was the basis for the regulation we are looking at, Dublin III, and this provision, which is talking about those unaccompanied adults and children from outside who wish to join a family member who is already here in order to make the application. It is about respect for family life as well as seeking to give the benefit of the asylum application under the convention, to which we are, after all, already parties. So without elaborating and with great respect to what has been said by everyone who has spoken so far, I too support the amendment.