Conflict Zones: Protection of Interpreters and Translators

Lord Patten Excerpts

Wednesday 18th March 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Patten (Con)]

My Lords, we owe a duty of care to those who work for the United Kingdom Government and our armed services around the globe. We should exercise that duty of care with the maximum freedom that we can manage. Sometimes, it is not just a duty of care but a debt of honour that we have to repay to those who help us. It is an old fashioned word, “honour”, but that is what I feel.

I follow everything that the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, has said with great care. She knows a great deal about the subject; far more than me. I agree with what she said and the guidance that she has given the Chamber this evening. I thank her for that.

One of the ways of exercising that duty of care, or maybe repaying that debt of honour, is to allow those at risk in a third country—not just in Afghanistan—to come to this country. I believe that we need a firm, well managed immigration policy in this country, but one exercised with discretion for those in need. Very often, people talk about moral duties. I am no moral philosopher, but sometimes we hear that phrase so often that I think some departments and Ministers might benefit from having a moral philosopher or two about the place to advise them. It would be very useful and would broaden the minds of Ministers and civil servants—sometimes. Neither do I want to appeal purely to some concept of human rights or natural rights that must be adhered to. I am talking much more pragmatically about my feelings of sympathy to those who have put their life on the line in various parts of the globe, particularly Afghanistan, on which the noble Baroness has just spoken so interestingly.

I want to sharpen up what I mean in a brief and pointed intervention with a couple of hypothetical examples of people who come from Afghanistan and want to get into this country. One might be an “economic migrant”, that phrase if not coined at least made popular by my noble friend Lord Hurd of Westwell as Home Secretary when the great transoceanic movements were beginning back in the 1980s. On the other hand, someone may be left in Afghanistan, Iraq or one of the other territories to which the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, referred who is in fear of his life—more generally, it is “his” life and more rarely “her” life. They may be in Helmand, perhaps living in a secure zone and being shot at and threatened by the Taliban. These are two very different cases, but they are the sort of cases that Ministers, such as my noble friend or the Home Secretary, Mrs May, or the civil servants who advise them may have on their desks. They are very hard decisions. The economic migrant might come from Afghanistan, travel overland through Turkey, around Syria and perhaps up through the Mediterranean, Lampedusa and Europe. He will get to Calais perhaps in the back of a lorry and eventually reach the United Kingdom to try to better himself—even though it might have been better for him to have stayed where he was and try to help grow that country. That is one sort of case that lands on the desks of Ministers all the time.

Equally, there is the handful of marginal cases, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, referred so clearly, who are still in Afghanistan, are still under threat and are still trying to get out. Very few of them have thus far been let in even under the various schemes that have been produced because maybe they have not served for 12 months or more, or were not in place in 2012. They finished their service in 2011, but are still at risk because of what went on before 2011. Yet those people are still there—we are talking about a handful; I do not know how large their number is; perhaps the Minister knows all this so much better than me and will be able to adduce the likely numbers. That is another sort of case that goes on Ministers’ desks. If I was a Minister or civil servant, I would hate to have to make the decision if there was a bearing-down on the numbers that could be got in and a distinction had to be made between the economic migrant—who in his way, however misguided, has been so brave getting to the United Kingdom through all those problems—and the translator or interpreter who is under threat in Afghanistan.

As one who believes in managed immigration and if faced with such a difficult choice, I have to say that I would come down, albeit after making sure due process was followed in repatriating the Afghan economic migrant, on the side of letting into the country the person who had served with the worry of IEDs blowing up and people shooting at him as he travelled about Afghanistan or elsewhere. I believe that we have a debt of honour as UK citizens to those people—not a moral duty but a debt of honour—because they have helped us and put themselves in harm’s way. I know how difficult and challenging this is as we exercise a managed immigration policy. I have great sympathy for my noble friend the Minister, but I hope that he will come down on the side of those handfuls of people who are threatened in such a way.