Refugees (Family Reunion) Bill [HL]

Lord Oates Excerpts

Friday 18th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Oates (LD)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lady Hamwee on introducing this Bill. Her commitment and that of my noble friend Lady Ludford to the cause of those seeking refuge in our country is as impressive as it is long- standing.

Over the many years that I have been involved in advocating for those entangled in the immigration system, I have been baffled by its unfathomable complexity and its inability to resolve cases, leaving applicants in limbo. Applicants are told one day that they have been granted refugee status, but the next day that that was an error. People are told that they have the right to work, then that they do not, and then told again that they do, but it will take months to get the residence card they need. In all these unfathomable difficulties, I have always been grateful for the help of the former Immigration Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe; and now the noble Lord, Lord Hanson, is proving very helpful as well.

Above all, I have been disturbed that often the system seems so disconnected from human feeling or human understanding. Nowhere is that lack of human feeling more apparent than in the effective prohibition of children granted refugee status in the UK sponsoring the immigration of their close family members. It is hard to imagine the deep emotional trauma that this must cause for child refugees already traumatised by the process that led them to seek refuge in the first place, now discovering that they are barred from ever reuniting with close family in the UK. The noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, gave us compelling statistics on the real consequences of this in terms of children who have gone missing.

The position taken to date by the UK Government goes entirely against the interests of these children and is in contravention of our obligations under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and the UK’s own expressed policy that the best interests of the child should be the primary consideration. We have already heard that the reports of the Commons Home Affairs Committee in 2016, the European Affairs Committee and, most recently, the Justice and Home Affairs Committee have concluded that this change in the law is essential and there is no evidence to support the argument that this would be a pull factor.

My noble friend described this as a modest Bill, but it would restore some humanity to our immigration system, and as such I warmly commend it.