Refugee Family Reunion

Debate between Neil O'Brien and Kate Green

Thursday 21st June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Neil O’Brien (Harborough) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Angus Brendan MacNeil), and I pay tribute to his work in this area. It is fitting that the Member for such a constituency, which is beautiful and has wonderful people, is acting and leading the charge in this area, not least because it has been the site of forced emigration in the past.

I welcome this important debate in the middle of Refugee Week. The subject is important all over the world—in Germany, in Italy and in the US—and I welcome President Trump’s decision to change course on the policy of separating children from their families at the border. This issue is also important in my constituency, which has welcomed all kinds people fleeing persecution in other countries. For example, in the 1970s, we welcomed the Ugandan Asians. I pay tribute to how they have made a new life in this country, building amazing businesses, creating an amazing sense of community and integrating into our community. They are amazing people.

Others have come to my constituency more recently. I meet many of them because Kennedy House in Wigston in my constituency is a centre for people seeking asylum and new refugees. I pay tribute to those who volunteer with those people, helping them to integrate into our community and in other practical ways. They often bring some of them to my surgery, so I hear about some of their problems. I also pay tribute to the groups, such as Market Harborough Helping Refugees, that raise funds to help refugees in this country and overseas with practical things such as blankets to help them as they seek a new home.

Today’s debate is about the importance of family reunion but before I turn to that, this being Refugee Week, I hope the House will not mind me briefly mentioning a few things that we could do to improve the lives of refugees. I have three suggestions that have sprung from the work done by the all-party parliamentary group on loneliness, of which I am a member, and from my constituency experiences.

The first thing that the Government should do is clarify the rules on refugees and asylum seekers doing voluntary work in the community. I understand the arguments against allowing asylum seekers to do paid work and the arguments about pull factors, but they should be able to do voluntary work. By doing such work, they can express their strong desire to do something helpful for the community that is hosting them, but they can also integrate and learn English, so it can play an important role in them becoming part of our country. Unfortunately, refugee charities tell me that the rules are not clear and that people have lost out as a result of doing voluntary work, so it would be good to clarify them.

The second thing that we could do to improve the lives of refugees living here is to help more of them to get a decision within our target time. Probably the most common reason that asylum seekers come to my surgery is that the deadline that they were given for a decision on their application has passed and they are wondering what is happening. It is clearly difficult to make decisions on complicated cases involving people who have fled from war zones where public records may have been destroyed or otherwise made unavailable, but, if we could speed up decisions, that would help many people who spend a long time unable to do anything but wait, which is a painful experience for them.

[Kate Green]

I am glad that the hon. Gentleman mentions the delays in getting a decision. A group of refugees from Refugee Voice recently visited me in my constituency to make exactly that point. Living with indecision and uncertainty, sometimes for years, puts incredible emotional pressure on people.

Relating that to the hon. Gentleman’s earlier point about access to paid employment, does he agree that, increasingly, decisions are taking a very long time to be made, through no fault of the claimant, and that asylum seekers should be allowed to work after a certain period if delays in decision making mean there is a failure to give them a decision on their status?

[Neil O'Brien]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. I have heard that argument, which is an intriguing one. It would be a big step to do anything that suggested those people would be able to work in this country, so we should be very careful when we think about it. However, I understand the argument that, if people have to wait a very long time, perhaps something about their treatment should change at that point.