Refugee Children: Family Reunion in the UK Debate
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Luke Pollard
Main Page: Luke Pollard (Labour (Co-op) - Plymouth Sutton and Devonport)Department Debates - View all Luke Pollard's debates with the Home Office
Refugee Children: Family Reunion in the UK
Luke Pollard Excerpts(6 years, 9 months ago)
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Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Hugh Gaffney) on securing this debate, and I thank my colleagues for their remarks. The migration crisis is a great test of our values as a nation. It shines a light on the actions, not the words, of our politicians. Britain has much to be proud of in the realm of international development, but when it comes to unaccompanied child refugees, we are being found wanting. It is not an immigration issue; it is an issue of our shared humanity. At the moment, we are not at our best, and we need to be.
The changes to the immigration rules, particularly those affecting unaccompanied child refugees, need to be accelerated. The approach is not working. I welcome the changes announced in the Sandhurst treaty, but since that treaty was signed, how many more children have been brought forward? How much more money and funding has been allocated to supporting these unaccompanied child refugees? Will the Minister reassure us—so many people out there do not know the answer to this—on whether unaccompanied child refugees are included in the immigration targets? We should ensure that young people fleeing conflict and poverty are not counted for political purposes, or for the purposes of an immigration target; that would send the strong message from this House that those young people matter as individuals, not as a statistic.
I was pleased to join my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter) in Calais. I saw the shocking conditions those young people were in. I want to know that each and every time we stand up, we move a little closer to improving the lives of those kids. Some of the images I saw and stories I heard still haunt me. A stat from UNICEF shows that a majority of those young people were sexually abused on their way to Calais. That still really angers me. What additional help are we giving to those children whom we are accepting to deal with the sexual assaults and abuse they have suffered en route to the UK?
Plymouth has a fine reputation for welcoming refugees. Students and Refugees Together is a superb example of how open and welcoming we are as a city, but there is still so much more we need to do as a country. I would be grateful if the Minister continued to fight the case within Government, because we need to send a message to our entire nation that these young unaccompanied refugees are not drains on the state. They are part of our shared humanity, and we have a collective responsibility to look after them.
Dame Cheryl Gillan (in the Chair)
I thank Members for their forbearance, because I can now get the last speaker on my list in.