EU: Asylum Seekers

Lord Marlesford Excerpts

Thursday 18th June 2015 Grand Committee

[Lord Marlesford (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Dykes, for securing this debate.

The key phrase he used was “small number”. That is simply not true: we are not talking about small numbers; we are talking about 3 million or 4 million refugees from the present conflict in the Middle East, and potentially millions more—probably half a million—waiting on the Libyan coast to be removed. The situation is wholly unsustainable as it is. It is not surprising that the members of the EU have rejected the EU quota proposals, because they are pure tokenism, pure gesture politics. If we talk about tens of thousands, or 100,000 or 200,000 in total, we are not beginning to scratch the surface. Let us look a little wider and a little more realistically at what has really happened.

The problem is that we have set up a system—absolutely rightly, as we have a moral and international obligation—to rescue people in peril at sea. People are put into small dinghies with outboard motors and enough petrol to get out to sea, and then, following a mobile phone call, HMS “Bulwark” or somebody rescues them. It would be more logical to send HMS “Bulwark” to Tripoli to transfer them. That is not the solution. The Prime Minister has made it clear that we have to break the link between getting on a boat and getting residence in Europe.

I strongly propose that we set up a new holding area somewhere in north Africa. Various countries have been mentioned, including Tunisia and Egypt. I favour Libya, which is already a failing state. We should not just set up a holding area but think a bit more widely and set up something that could one day itself become a state. I would call it Refugia, for want of a better name. It is not an EU problem; it is a UN problem, a world problem. We would need a UN mandate in the form of a Security Council resolution. The Security Council is the fastest legislature in the world; its resolutions have the force of international law. It would have to be negotiated with the appropriate country in north Africa. We would set it up and then it would need military help for its establishment, protection and guarding. That would probably best be done by NATO, again under UN auspices.

There have been many examples in history of democratic states emerging from temporary arrangements where other countries have a mandate to run some territory. This happened after the First World War with the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire and the creation of Syria, Iraq, Palestine and the rest. After the Second World War, Germany and Japan were run by other countries and eventually emerged as fully democratic states.

I suggest, therefore, that we have a holding area which people could be returned to or take refuge in and be properly assessed. Some may well be admitted to countries as economic migrants, refugees or asylum seekers. The main challenge, however, is to do it on a scale that meets the problem, which is enormous. The problem is caused largely by the growth of political Islam, a basically fascist organisation that is having a profoundly destabilising effect on the world. We must have a solution that is relative and relevant to the size of the problem.