Refugee Crisis: European Anti-migrant Parties

Lord West of Spithead Excerpts

Wednesday 16th March 2016 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Courtown]

Yes, that of last week and the finalisation of the agreement, at the end of this week, of what was discussed on 7 March. No, the noble Baroness shakes her head. As far as I understand her concern, the European Union has agreed that, for every Syrian readmitted by Turkey from the Greek islands, another Syrian in Turkey will be resettled in the EU. Visa-free travel for Turkey will also be accelerated, as will next steps on Turkey’s EU accession progress and the disbursement of the €3 billion agreed in December last year.

[Lord West of Spithead (Lab)]

My Lords, it was quite clear last autumn that, unless we stopped the flow of refugees from Libya and Turkey into what was becoming a worse and worse Mediterranean, there would be many deaths. We still have not really got any composite plan together to stop this flow of refugees before they leave territorial seas. I know that an attempt was made with the Turkish authorities. Will the noble Earl please let us know whether we are now coming to some conclusion that will stop people going to sea? If we do not, they will die. They are dying every day.

[The Earl of Courtown]

The noble Lord, Lord West, as ever, draws attention to some of the saddest aspects of this immigration crisis. The whole point of the summit last week was to break the business model of the people traffickers—the smugglers—and to end the link between getting in a boat and getting settlement in Europe.