European Union Agency for Asylum

Michael Fabricant Excerpts

Tuesday 15th November 2016 General Committees

[Michael Fabricant (Lichfield) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is, as ever, very courteous, but does he not suspect that it might be because no one else is available to do the job?

[Mr Goodwill]

I could not be so uncharitable, I am sure.

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[Mr Goodwill]

We certainly stand by our record of stepping up to the mark in helping with the unprecedented wave of migration across the European Union. Home Office officials, as well as other officials, are operating in Italy and Greece. As the hon. Gentleman will know, the situation in Greece has not yet been normalised. Of course, operating through the Dublin mechanism, not only have we been able to bring children across from countries such as Italy, Greece and, in particular, France in recent days and weeks, but children whose needs are best served by being in another EU member state have been moved to join family elsewhere. The system is voluntary: we have been offering technical and practical support, including funding for particular needs, as well as the support we have been giving in the Mediterranean, using vessels commissioned to help to rescue life and deter migration there.

[Michael Fabricant]

Although I am not a great lover of simplistic phrases, does my hon. Friend still stand by the precept adopted by our former leader, William Hague, who is now in another place, that this country should be a safe haven but not a soft touch?

[Mr Goodwill]

Of course that is a commendable concept; it is how it is practically delivered. That is why we have regulation such as Dublin III, which enables a mechanism to be put in place to help where we can. As we have seen following the dismantlement of the camp in Calais, through the Dublin III regulation and, indeed, section 67 of the Immigration Act 2016—the so-called Dubs amendment —we have been able to play our part in giving care and help to unaccompanied asylum-seeking children whom we saw in such dreadful conditions in Calais.

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[Ms Abbott]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Rosindell. I am glad to be able to speak in this important debate. We know, because the polling tells us, that immigration is very high up our constituents’ list of concerns. Whether it is the people in contact with me daily who are frightened by the tenor of the immigration debate—a fear that has been reinforced by the election of Donald Trump in the United States—or whether it is the people who believe that immigration is the source of many of their problems, we can all agree that this subject should be taken seriously.

The Opposition argue for an immigration policy that is based on the facts, which puts the good of the economy and our GDP first, and which emphasises the kind of society we want to be—an immigration policy that speaks to the historical values of the British people. We welcome the draft regulations in principle. We believe they are long overdue. More than 1 million refugees arrived in southern Europe last year. In the first six weeks of this year, the rate increased tenfold on the same period in 2015. Sadly, the number of missing children in Europe has far exceeded 10,000.

Earlier in the year I visited Lesbos, which is the first port of call for tens of thousands of refugees who have crossed the Mediterranean. From meeting the people who run the facilities for refugees and from meeting the refugees themselves, I was struck by what a huge burden the issue is on a country such as Greece, which has many economic problems. I was struck that even in the middle of what is obviously a crisis for the people of Lesbos, they were trying to do their best to welcome the refugees: many residents of Lesbos are people who sought refuge in Greece from other parts of the Mediterranean and other parts of the middle east.

I was struck by the inadequacy of Europe’s response to the refugee issue. It cannot be right that a country such as Greece, which, rightly or wrongly, has been through so much economically in recent years, is taking such a huge burden of our response to the refugee challenge. The Minister has said that the Government have sent half a dozen or a dozen Home Office officials over there. I was on Lesbos and I saw no evidence of a substantive British response or substantive British support for the challenge the Greeks are facing. I was also struck—on Lesbos and while visiting other refugee camps in Lebanon and, of course, Calais—by how ruthless the people smugglers are. I therefore welcome the regulations, the aims of which are to achieve an organised and humane response, and to tackle the people smugglers.

As hon. Members might imagine from a former Home Office civil servant, I believe in the Dublin III regulation. I believe that refugees should be processed at their first point of contact with Europe. However, it is grossly unfair to expect Greece and Italy to struggle on as they have been doing. The Dublin III regulation has been very difficult to enforce, yet if we do not enforce it, it will be not the countries of Europe but the people smugglers who decide where refugees and economic migrants go. That is why we must have a level of European co-operation and a framework that will work in a way it has not up to now. I hope that we all agree that the Dublin regulation is in need of update and reform to fit our current reality.

The UK has long benefited from the arrangements, as one of the few member states that transports more asylum seekers across its borders than are received under the Dublin regulation. I believe, and I think that Opposition Members strongly believe, that whether or not we are in Schengen and whether or not we are formally in the EU, we are part of the European family of nations. We must take our fair share of the responsibility. We should be opting in to a regulation that makes sharing the burden as equal as possible. On Eurodac, it is clearly important that we have a robust system of processing asylum seekers and determining their entitlement to be refugees. The regulation to improve and expand Eurodac goes some way towards meeting that need.

[Michael Fabricant]

I am following the hon. Lady’s speech with great interest and I agree with much of it, but she began by saying, quite rightly, that she is aware that immigration is a major issue in the minds of many of our constituents. She also said—and I have some sympathy with this—that the United Kingdom must take its fair share and should remain a part of the scheme after leaving the European Union. How does she reconcile those two concepts when, as she will know, of the 52% of the population who voted for Brexit, many are believed to have done so because of overall net immigration to the UK?

[Ms Abbott]

I am well aware of what the hon. Gentleman is saying. I can only repeat what I said at the outset. Our immigration policy should be based on the facts, not on urban myth. It should be based on what is good for the economy and good for society, and it should be based on our values as a country. If that means that we have to go out and argue and campaign for that position, I for one am willing to do so. Anything else leads to a downward spiral of anti-immigration rhetoric, and we can see the consequence of that downward spiral in the result of the recent presidential election in the United States. The US electoral college has spoken, and of course the American people are entitled to elect the President of their choice, but we should never legitimise Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim and anti-women rhetoric, and we should be aware that one of his first appointments was of Steve Bannon, who runs the website Breitbart, which is largely regarded as anti-Semitic. We must work with our oldest ally as we have always done, but we cannot legitimise a political narrative of that kind.

[Ms Abbott]

Broadly, we support these regulations in principle, and specifically we believe in much more genuine European co-operation. That is the position of the Labour party.

[Michael Fabricant]

The hon. Lady said just now that she would wish that after we leave the European Union we continue within this scheme—or is she now saying that she does not wish that to be the case?

[Ms Abbott]

If I knew what the Government’s plan on these matters was, I could respond to what the hon. Gentleman said. [Interruption.]