Refugee Family Reunion

Debate between Neil O'Brien and Angus Brendan MacNeil

Thursday 21st June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Neil O'Brien]

I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. It is extremely difficult and no one should downplay or minimise the difficulty of the task facing the officials who make these difficult decisions and who are trying to investigate very complicated cases.

My third suggestion for improving the lives of refugees in the UK is to teach them English. When I meet people who have come here as refugees and hear their stories, I am particularly struck by what it is like to arrive in a country where they do not know anyone. It is often a very different culture, and they are navigating quite complicated bureaucracy without speaking any of the language.

I am always amazed and impressed by how quickly some people pick up English, having started with absolutely nothing. I met an amazing Burundian woman the other day at the all-party parliamentary group on loneliness. She talked about her story and spoke in brilliant English, even though only a few short years ago she spoke no English at all. None the less, despite the success of many people in learning English when they come to this country, it can be very isolating and very lonely for those who do not have the language.

The fiscal environment, notwithstanding the welcome investment in the NHS, remains difficult but, working through community and voluntary groups, it need not cost a huge amount to help more people to learn English more quickly. The benefits in creating an integrated society in which more refugees can work and feel that they really belong would be enormous.

The hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar quoted a number of excellent Scottish poets. When I meet refugees, I am often struck by the words of Grace Nichols’s poem “Epilogue”:

“I have crossed an ocean

I have lost my tongue

from the root of the old one

a new one has sprung.”

I am always reminded of that poem because it is an incredibly impressive thing to have come to this country with nothing and to have learned a language, which I would struggle to do under ideal conditions. The power of the language to make people feel properly part of this country is very strong.

[Angus Brendan MacNeil]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on the way he is making the argument for learning the English language. I come from Gaelic Scotland, and Plaid Cymru Members come from Welsh Wales. Rather than the idea that refugees must learn our language because that is what we speak here and they must fit in, the idea of learning our language to stop them feeling isolated and lonely is commendable. I can get behind that idea, rather than demanding that people speak a language that I do not think is one of the original languages of the British Isles, but that is a minor point.

[Neil O'Brien]

The hon. Gentleman might say he makes a minor point, but it is an entirely fair one. I have been to some of the pubs in his constituency where other languages are spoken, and I certainly did not feel isolated or lonely—in fact, they were extremely sociable and very pleasant places to visit.

On family reunification, this country has a proud record of welcoming persecuted people from all over the world who have come to this country in fear for their lives. I think back to my childhood in Huddersfield: we had Chilean family friends who came to this country because their kind of politics was no longer welcome in Chile. My childhood in Huddersfield was enriched not only because those people had come here and worked hard as social workers but because they brought culturally interesting things to us. Family Christmases in Huddersfield involved empanadas, as well as the traditional turkey roast.

The resettlement schemes in this country have been a success. I have met people who have gone through those schemes, and they have had a much better experience than many people who have gone through the asylum route. We can learn a lot from the success of some of those schemes.

To summarise the current situation, as the hon. Gentleman has approached it, refugees can bring their children here if they are under the age of 18, but adult children are not included. Children under the age of 18 cannot bring their parents here. There are also powers for leave to be granted outside those rules in exceptional circumstances.

I can see the arguments both for and against changing those rules, and it sounds as if Ministers are thinking about it carefully. The question is whether we should go down the route of changing the rules, or whether we should instead use the exceptional circumstances rules in a more generous, more humane way. By way of analogy, I think of the people who are working on the Windrush generation. We need a high-calibre team with enough time to think properly about processing difficult cases. One way or another, the hon. Gentleman raises an important issue. The question is how we solve it.

I am not saying the hon. Gentleman’s idea is necessarily a bad one or the wrong one, but I will rehearse the downsides for a moment because this is a debate. We need to think carefully about whether we would be creating an incentive for young children to be trafficked. He rightly asks: who would use their children as bargaining chips? When people make the argument that the proposed change might lead to more unaccompanied children travelling to the UK irregularly, it is not a criticism of those children’s families, and we do not necessarily know anything about their circumstances. The children might be completely on their own, and it is almost certainly the case that, if they have parents, they will be desperate parents in a warzone who fear for their lives. We need to think about whether the change could lead to children being exploited by unscrupulous people smugglers.

In my own area, I am reminded of the case of Ahmed, a young Afghan boy who, in 2016, saved the lives of some 15 people. He was being smuggled into the UK and he arrived at Leicester Forest East services. He and those 15 people were trapped in an airtight lorry and running out of oxygen, and he had the presence of mind to text a charity, Help Refugees, which had given him a mobile phone. That text saved his life and the lives of those around him. They were much luckier than the 70 people who, just a few months previously, had choked to death at the hands of people smugglers in an airtight lorry in Austria. There are some truly wicked people in the people smuggling racket.