Unaccompanied Child Refugees: Europe

Stella Creasy Excerpts

Thursday 2nd November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

I start by putting on the record my admiration for the work of the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Heidi Allen); I know how personally and passionately she feels about these young people. My right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) and I have faced online and sometimes offline abuse that I do not believe reflects the best of our British character when it comes to protecting some of the most vulnerable people in our world. The hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire and my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner) mentioned their constituents, and I want to thank the people of Walthamstow who have reflected that sentiment.

I thank Debbie Bliss for organising the “Warmth from Walthamstow” project, which will take sleeping blankets and emergency blankets to the children who are still in Calais. I thank Rod Holmes, who runs our migrant action group and helps some of the people who are here to make the best of their lives. I thank Maud Milton for running the refugee kitchen that has been taking flapjacks to the children in Calais. I thank Katrina Kieffer-Wells, who runs Side By Side Refugees. I also thank national organisations such as Safe Passage and Help Refugees, which so valiantly fought but sadly lost in the High Court today—I hope the debate will continue. All those people and groups reflect the reality of the British public’s reaction when they see these children and what is happening to them. They recognise that our nation is a better place when we offer sanctuary, and today’s debate is about the best way of doing that.

Nobody is saying that we have not helped children; we are saying that the need to get things right is even more pressing today than it was perhaps a year ago. People may think that we have the resolved the issue, but conflict sadly continues around the world and the push factors that lead to people making dangerous journeys have not abated. While all of us may wish that the world were otherwise, the reality is that it is not. The reality on the ground in Calais is that hundreds of unaccompanied children are still sleeping rough. They need warmth not just from Walthamstow, but from our country.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend and the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Heidi Allen) on bringing this debate to the Chamber today. Last week, we were discussing modern slavery and the risk of human trafficking, so does my hon. Friend share my concern that if unaccompanied children are not rescued from the Calais camps, they could fall into the hands of traffickers?

[Stella Creasy]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Indeed, we have seen many reports that suggest that that is precisely the case. When there is no safe passage, that does not stop people coming here; it means that the only passage available is through the traffickers, which we know is unsafe.

Today’s debate is about asking the Minister to ensure that we are being the best of British and that we keep these children safe, because we have a moral obligation to do so. Indeed, it is in the best of our traditions. We hear that the French police will not allow NGO tents, meaning that many children are sleeping without any form of shelter at all, including unaccompanied children as young as nine. We want to hold the French authorities to account, but we must also hold ourselves to account for what we are doing to help.

[Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)]

The hon. Lady is making a typically powerful speech, as befits an award-winning “Backbencher of the Year”—I congratulate her on that. It is important that we put more pressure on the French authorities to behave properly and treat people well, children in particular.

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[Stella Creasy]

The hon. Gentleman will know that I bow to nobody in holding all Governments to account, and that means that I will not turn a blind eye to our Government and what they could do. Our power today is to send a clear message to the Minister about the ambition set out in the safeguarding statement, which was made over a year ago and is now, frankly, a little up in the air due to Brexit and issues around Dublin III and how we deal with unaccompanied children. The statement explicitly talked about children in Europe now to whom we may well have a responsibility. It is not good enough to ask somebody else to pick up the pieces if we are falling short ourselves. The concern today is that Britain is still falling short of what it can do for these children. This is about the nine-year-olds sleeping in bushes in Calais and the children sleeping without shelter in Greece and Italy. They are paying the price. I am pretty sure that the hon. Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke) would not want that on his conscience when there are practical things that we can do here in this House to make a difference. While the French authorities have put together a temporary administration centre that opened this week, it is dealing only with a small number of children. We know that there are issues with children being processed and with applications being heard.

A year ago, many of us were acting with good intent when we encouraged children and young people to go with officials to processing centres only to find that the goalposts had been moved. Changes to which children would be accepted, basing the decision on nationality not need, were made through pieces of legislation and statements that were issued without this House undertaking proper scrutiny. Since then, many of us have been concerned about how the Government approached local authorities. The High Court may not have agreed with us, but it is worth recording that the High Court was discussing the fact that the Government simply had not asked even the Northern Ireland Government what they could do. The Scottish authorities were told not to respond, and a third of English authorities did not respond to the consultation. We know that the British public support protecting children. If local authorities are asked, as we have found since the High Court began looking at the issue, we know that there are more places to be had. Are we really saying that this country can look after only 480 vulnerable young people, for whom there is nobody else in the world to protect them?

[Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on the recent recognition of her excellent work in this House. Does she agree that there are fantastic local authorities doing the everyday bits, such as registering children with GPs, getting them into college or school, providing friendship groupings and doing the mentoring? In tough times, does she agree that the Home Office needs to support local authorities in that joint endeavour?

[Stella Creasy]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend, who anticipates one of my points. We know that the Government have spent £81 million on security measures in Calais, yet just one member of staff has been seconded to France to try to progress family reunion claims even though we know that one in six people in the Jungle is trying to reconnect with their family. Local authorities undoubtedly need resource, but we also need a process that is quick and fair. We do not have that at the moment and those children often wait on their own for months before they access accommodation.

The Minister will know that I have raised cases with him of children who are waiting, often with severe mental health needs as a result of the delay—frightened, vulnerable young people who are looking to this country to be what it has been in the past.

We may be talking today about Calais and the processing centre, but we know that it is not just about Calais; it is about Greece. Not a single child has come from Greece as a result of the Dubs amendment, even though we know there are thousands of unaccompanied child refugees there. The same is true of Italy. Two thirds of the 3,000 unaccompanied children in Greece do not have proper shelter and care. Those are our children to take responsibility for, working with the Greek authorities and the Italian authorities. [Interruption.] The Minister is shaking his head. Is he really saying that he can be proud of a country that looks at children sleeping under bushes, without proper shelter and care, and says it is somebody else’s problem—nothing to do with us? Of course the Greek authorities have to take responsibility, but so too do we, Minister.

The question today is what responsibility we are taking for children in Europe, because the statement a year ago did not just specify Calais; it talked about all these children. When he responds, I want to hear from the Minister what he is going to do about the children in Italy and Greece as well, because we have a responsibility to all of them. He can shake his head all he wants, but I suspect the British public will not be satisfied with the idea that because some of them are in France, we might do something about them, but we do not have a responsibility for those who are in Italy and Greece.

[Victoria Prentis (Banbury) (Con)]

The hon. Lady is making a powerful case. Can we also make the case for the children who are still in the region or still in Syria? The Hands Up Foundation, which my small Singing for Syrians initiative tries to help, makes the point that not only are they suffering and alone, but often they are under gunfire. It is important not to forget that they matter too, and this Government have done so much to get funds out there where they are desperately needed.

[Stella Creasy]

I do not disagree with the hon. Lady, but it is not an either/or situation. As I said at the start, we all wish the world was different. All of us wish that there was not conflict, fear and persecution. All of us wish that the Oromo people were not fleeing in fear of their lives and that young Afghan boys were not frightened of the Taliban, but they are and they are acting accordingly. The question for us is whether we will act as well. That is the challenge. Whether they are in the region, whether they have fled to Europe or whether they are among the 10,000 at risk of trafficking, do we as British society want to say that it is just somebody else’s problem, or do we want to have a process in place so that we can hold our head high?

I say to the hon. Lady that for all of us this is not just about immediacy; it is about our history as well. It is not just about all of us who were inspired by Lord Dubs. Government Members may find this surprising, but I often say that I share something in common with Nigel Farage: Creasy, like Farage, is a Huguenot surname. Many of us have refugee traditions within our families. Many of us might, in a different generation or a parallel universe, be that child looking for help.

Over a year ago, I was trying to chase down with the Government what had happened to 178 children whom the Prime Minister herself was directly notified about and whom I have asked about repeatedly—children who would have been eligible to come here under the Dubs amendment. I have to tell the Minister that, more than a year and a half on, I am still waiting for a response that gives me confidence that our Government know what happened to those children whom they were notified about and who were in Calais at that time. Nobody is able to make contact with them. Those children may be in this country, but they may be elsewhere and they may be with the traffickers. I make a plea to the Minister: will he at least go and see whether we can find out whether any of those children are safe on our shores? I think that we have to accept responsibility because they came to us asking for help.

I want to put on record why I have tabled amendment 332 to the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill. There will be debates about the Dublin regulation and I agree with the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire that we need to make sure that we are living up to our Dublin commitments. There will also be debates about what happens to the commitments we made in the safeguarding statement a year ago. Clearly there have been issues. For example, the safeguarding statement spoke about working with the devolved authorities, but that has not happened to date, as the court case shows. Those debates need to happen on the Floor of the House, because how we treat refugee children cannot be dealt with in a statutory instrument Committee hidden away elsewhere in the House.

I therefore make a plea to the Minister. He may disagree with me about our obligations regarding the numbers of children. I still think that we made a commitment to 3,000 children with the Dubs amendment, and I would like to hold the Government to account on that. However, I certainly think that, given that parliamentarians debated that amendment and are having this debate today, any further changes that would affect our ability to help some of the most vulnerable children should not be hidden away. I hope he agrees that no changes will be made by statutory instrument, whether under the immigration Bill or the withdrawal Bill, to the treatment of refugee children. If he will at least say that, I think we can be on the same page in respect of this country’s commitment to do the best by these people. Certainly it should not be up to those wonderful men and women in all our constituencies to lead the charge and for this House to be found wanting.

I congratulate the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire on securing the debate. I look forward to working across the House on these issues, and I hope that the Minister will hear the plea to be the best of Britain.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

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[Adam Holloway]

I thank my hon. and gallant Friend for his intervention. The reality is that this was some time ago, and that there were very, very few children. What I found in my week-long stay at the Sangatte camp was that the refugees were mostly fit young men. I would do exactly as they did—they had sold bits of land in Kurdistan or wherever else and were coming to England. The reasons why that camp was full, why the Jungle camp was full and why there are thousands of people around Calais is that they know they will get into Britain. We have people drowning in the Mediterranean because we have created the pull factor: the expectation that if they make it to Europe, they will stay in Europe. Until we break that, we will continue to have this problem, and we will continue to have so many young people coming over here.

The reality with what we describe as these “refugee children”—I do acknowledge that we cannot have nine-year olds living in bushes—is that 90% of the unaccompanied asylum-seeking children who applied for asylum in 2016 were male, 59% of whom claimed to be either 16 or 17 years old.

[Stella Creasy]

The hon. Gentleman is talking about people who may have come here illegally. Does he agree that if we have a safe and legal process, all of the Daily Mail myths about who the refugee children are can be dealt with because Home Office officials will be processing them on the ground? That is what we are talking about today.

[Adam Holloway]

I have great sympathy with what the hon. Lady says, but I have also seen these kids in the camps. We should be doing everything we can for the many, not for the relative few. [Interruption.] It is true. We should not just do what makes us feel good. There are millions of refugees in the middle east who need as much help as we can give. We cannot settle them all in the UK; we must do what we can for the many.

By taking such young people, we are spending vast amounts of money that could much more effectively help children in their own regions. We are also creating pull factors, which encourage young people to embark on these long and sometimes lethal journeys. Here, council foster places are already oversubscribed. The amount of money spent on each child is enormous. I am saying not that we should not take in some cases, but that we should think about where we spend this money. We should use the money to look after people nearer their own homes. We must do what is right, and not what makes us feel good. If we are really to help all those who most need our help, we would do better to help them outside our borders, and to stop these immoral pull factors. We should be helping the many, not pulling in the few.

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[Victoria Atkins]

My hon. Friend has clearly read my notes because I was just about to move on to the other things on which we can agree. We can all agree that no one wants child—or, indeed, adult—refugees to fall victim to the serious organised crime gangs that run the people-trafficking rings, and we can all agree that we must target those criminal gangs, which are in it for profit and nothing more.

Surely we can all agree that children should receive the highest levels of care when they come to live in this country and we offer them a home. It was reported recently in the papers that children from Vietnam who have been taken into care as part of our refugee programme are going missing within hours or days of finding foster care. They are being tempted back out—or are sometimes physically taken back out—by criminal gangs in this country. We cannot and must not allow that to happen. We have to remember that we need to look after people properly when they come to our country. I am sure that we can also agree that expanding the vulnerable persons resettlement scheme from only Syria to all nationalities was good and entirely just.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham said, the UK’s record is significant. More than 8,500 people have been resettled so far, and about half of them are children. The United Kingdom resettled more refugees from outside Europe in 2016 than any other EU country. More than a third of all resettlement to the EU was to the UK that year. We should acknowledge that in the consensual terms of this debate.

I listened carefully to the intervention by the hon. Member for Walthamstow on my hon. Friend the Member for Gravesham about the expertise of Home Office officials. I completely understand where she was coming from in what she asked for, but Italy, France, Greece and other countries are sovereign countries, and my concern is that we cannot just roll into town, as it were, and take over their immigration systems. We have—I imagine the Minister will tell us this—to work very much in co-operation and partnership with them.

[Stella Creasy]

The point was that the hon. Member for Gravesham (Adam Holloway) is concerned about illegal people being here. If we have safe and legal routes, we can be confident that it is child refugees who are coming. We can deal with that in partnership with other nations. The point is that, right now, we do not do that and, as a consequence, children are coming illegally.

[Victoria Atkins]

We can agree on the fact that we do not want any illegal immigration, and I say this coming from a criminal law background, not least because sometimes it means that the people who come here—not refugees, but others—have very bad intent. I was trying to make the point that we have to find a way of working better with our neighbours to make sure their systems work as well as we would like them to and as well—I hope we can agree on this—as they work in this country.

I will end on a wider, philosophical question, which was touched on by my wonderful hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase (Amanda Milling). Immigration is an international problem, and we are only beginning to comprehend the extent of the task ahead of us. Across the world, we are seeing people on the move. They may be on the move because they live in conflict or war zones, as we have seen, sadly, in Burma. They may be on the move because they have the entirely human aspiration to create a better life for themselves and their families. The developed countries in this world are going to have to find a way to deal with that, whether by trying to sort out conflict zones or by trying to find ways, as we do, to use international development to raise the tide of economic wellbeing so that everybody has the chance of a good life and opportunities in life. We will have to face that challenge, and we will have to do it across the world. Sadly, the issue will be with us for years and years to come.

Immigration Act 2016: Section 67

Stella Creasy Excerpts

Wednesday 19th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Brandon Lewis]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. It is important that we continue to give a clear message about the atrocious and completely unacceptable behaviour of the disgraceful traffickers out there who continue to ply their despicable trade. The European Migrant Smuggling Centre was formed in February this year in response to the increase in the number of irregular migrants. We continue to work with our partners, along with Europol and our National Crime Agency, to focus on and drive out that form of trafficking, as well as the organised crime that thrives around it. There has to be a clear message at every stage. That despicable behaviour is not acceptable and it needs to end.

[Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

As the Minister will know from the response of the High Court to the judicial review of the consultation on the places available for children in the UK, section 67 is explicitly about families in Europe. May I ask him about a specific case that I wrote to his office about more than a week ago, involving an incredibly vulnerable Syrian family in Lille who have been wrongly refused the right to come to the UK under the Dublin regulations? I have not yet had even an acknowledgment from his office of receipt of that correspondence. Will the Minister meet me to urgently review this case of a suicidal mother and her young children and discuss how we can improve how people claim asylum and come to the UK, so that it is not only the smugglers who meet them in Calais?

[Brandon Lewis]

As the hon. Lady will appreciate, I am not going to comment on a particular case today, but as soon as I leave the Dispatch Box I will chase up the case she mentions and why she has not had a response. I will make sure that she gets one as soon as possible.

Health, Social Care and Security

Stella Creasy Excerpts

Wednesday 28th June 2017 Commons Chamber

[Amber Rudd]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his contribution. This may be something that the new commission for counter-extremism will want to look at.

Since 2015, we have had a Government-wide counter-extremism strategy, the first of its kind. At the heart of the strategy is a partnership with communities to make sure that we build on British values. We have published a hate crime action plan and funded additional security measures at more than 50 places of worship. We are also supporting 53 civil society groups that are confronting extremism in their communities.

However, defeating the evil ideology of extremism is one of the greatest challenges of our time, and there is more that we must be able to do. That is why we will have the new commission, which will support the Government to identify and eradicate extremist ideology in all its forms. Across society and online, we will work with communities, and public sector and civil society groups, to promote and defend our pluralistic values of democracy, freedom of belief and expression, the rule of law, mutual respect, and opportunity for all. The commission will advise the Government on what new powers might be needed to tackle the evolving threat. Work is under way on the design of the commission, and we will set out our plans in due course.

Turning to the future immigration system, the Gracious Speech included an immigration Bill that will allow the Government to end the EU’s rules on free movement of EU nationals in the UK, ensuring that we have the flexibility to create a fair and controlled immigration system. It will give us control over the numbers of people who come to the UK from the EU while welcoming those with the skills and expertise to make our nation better. What these rules look like will depend on the needs of the UK, and we are considering all the options of our future system very carefully. It is imperative that we understand what the impact could be on different sectors of the economy and the labour market, and that we make sure that businesses and communities have an opportunity to contribute their views on any future system. As now, new immigration rules will be subject to scrutiny by Parliament.

[Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

An issue that has been vexing many of my EU constituents who have been here for many years is whether the Government will admit that such people now face an income threshold if they wish to bring a family member here to the UK. Many of them who are on low incomes—for example, nurses who are in band 5 and on below £22,000—will not be able to bring a family member here. Will the Home Secretary confirm that, and is she going to investigate what impact it will have on public services?

[Amber Rudd]

The Prime Minister made her statement about the EU nationals earlier this week. I urge the hon. Lady to reassure her constituents who fall into that cohort that they maintain these rights until at least when we leave the EU in 2019, and then after that they will have two years in which to apply. I cannot give her any more detail than that in terms of the other rights, elements of which are subject to the discussions with the EU at the moment. However, I would say to her, and to other Members here, that the Prime Minister was absolutely clear that those 3.2 million or 3.4 million people are going to be allowed to stay. We are yet to have additional discussions with the EU about elements of these rights. I hope that Members here will take that message back to any concerned EU citizens in their constituencies.

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[Amber Rudd]

I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will have an opportunity to speak on health at the end of this debate.

We are determined to deliver the best Brexit deal to secure our future as we leave the EU. We are determined to enhance our standing in the world and bring our United Kingdom closer together, and intent on building a stronger economy and a fairer society, taking action to keep families, communities and our country safe.

[Stella Creasy]

rose—

[Amber Rudd]

I am not going to give way further. The hon. Lady will have a chance to make her own remarks later.

We will be challenging extremism, protecting the vulnerable, giving mental health the attention it deserves and improving social care for the long term, putting ourselves at the service of millions of ordinary working people for whom we will work every day in the national interest, setting out a programme for a Britain that works for everyone.

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[Rosie Cooper (West Lancashire) (Lab)]

The issues that I wish to discuss encapsulate how the Health and Social Care Act 2012 is, day by day, weakening the fundamental foundations of the NHS; they include disparities in salaries and pay rises, lack of scrutiny and accountability, severe deficiencies in financial governance with regard to public moneys, and an emerging culture in which bosses feel they can act with impunity.

When I asked the Prime Minister about pay rises given to the Liverpool clinical commissioning group board, that information caused uproar and disbelief in health circles and among the wider public. While frontline staff were subject to the pay cap, the board gave themselves increases of between 15% and 81%. The chair got a 50% increase, taking him to £150,000; a practice nurse got 62%, taking her up to £65,000; and the chief executive and the finance director got 15% each. The board had only two non-exec directors; one was paid £105,000—a 42% increase—while the other got £55,000, a 25% increase. Deloitte’s limited-scope review confirmed that there were serious failings in governance, conflicts of interests, and payments to the board and non-exec directors that fell outside existing guidance. Only the chair of remuneration has resigned. The whole board who gave themselves these pay rises have not been held to account at all.

I alerted Simon Stevens to a cavalier attitude to contracting, including in the Liverpool Community Health NHS Trust break-up, in which the CCG insisted on a clinically unsustainable contract figure of £77 million, and then hid behind weak, low-ranking NHS Improvement employees. The conduct of the CCG in these matters fell well below that which would be required in commercial circumstances and should be investigated.

I alerted NHS England to the CCG’s handling of the SSP Health surgery contracts. One of the failing practices was allocated to the CCG chair’s practice. Several other surgeries went to Primary Care Connect, an organisation that did not even exist when the bids for these surgeries were opened and had only one director, who happened to be a former GP member of the governing body. I have had complaints from right across the city about how this was handled. The CCG is cutting clinical funding to vital organisations, telling them, “Don’t talk about it because you’ll be biting the hand that feeds you.”

[Stella Creasy]

My hon. Friend is describing an absolutely shocking case, which is about the treatment of NHS workers in her constituency. She talks about people being told not to talk about it. Today we have heard this Government say that they have heard our message about the importance of proper pay in our NHS, and now they are trying to shut that down because they are frightened about the reaction on their Back Benches. Is that not a terrible indictment of how they intend to run our country?

[Rosie Cooper]

It is a terrible indictment; the NHS is doing exactly these things. The CCG employed a senior administrator, paid them £70,000, and then seconded them to the GP Federation—a private company. While giving itself huge pay rises, cutting cash to organisations, and making unilateral financial decisions that threw NHS organisations into crisis decision making, it still found £14,000 to sponsor a “women of the year” dinner. NHS England has indicated that the financial governance is poor, but not fraud, because the Health and Social Care Act was so loosely written in this regard. I ask the Secretary of State whether the Government intend to tighten the rules to prevent such outrageous decisions being made ever again. Highly paid auditors who passed each year’s accounts without qualification did not notice. The ultimate accountable body is NHSE; so far, it has investigated remuneration governance, not governance generally, and it has taken no action against the accountable officer, the finance director and the board, who have shown them themselves to be failing in their duties. To me, this says institutionalised dishonesty bordering on corruption.

Sadly, I believe that the NHS is now so used to fudging and mudging that not sticking to the rules is becoming acceptable practice. We need to recalibrate our response to bad behaviour and make sure that the people who show it are held to account. We need an independent, systematic investigation into Liverpool CCG—and indeed the wider Liverpool health economy. Will the Health Secretary ensure that Liverpool CCG is independently investigated, and that any failings are openly addressed to ensure that this cannot and is not happening elsewhere in the country? After all, this is our taxpayers’ money.

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[Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

Like my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley North (Ian Austin), I begin by thanking the good people of my constituency for returning me to this place. I pledge to continue to work as hard for them as I can.

We lost two good people of Walthamstow during the election period, and I want to pay tribute to them for their work in our local community: Eleanor Firman, who was a passionate campaigner, and Councillor Nadeem Ali, who had so much to give the country and whose life was brutally cut short. Both of them would have been joining me to look at this Queen’s Speech and asking what it could do for our local healthcare services. They would both have been passionate advocates for our campaign for the future of Whipps Cross hospital, 40% of whose buildings were built before the NHS came into existence. It treats 450 people every day at its A&E, the highest figure in the country. If ever there was a group of NHS workers who deserved a pay rise, it is the nurses and doctors there. That is why I and many others on the Opposition Benches are rightly furious when we hear the Government saying that they have got the message but see that they are not acting.

Over the past seven years, we have seen how austerity has torn the social and economic fabric of our country, and we can now see how threadbare things are. We look at the Queen’s Speech and see a need to echo the call for investment in policing. We have a massive amount of gang crime in Walthamstow, and the cuts that the Government are talking about simply will not help. Many of my constituents have raised deep concerns about education and school funding cuts, as they see teachers having to buy goods for their schools. They see the rising levels of personal debt and, like my hon. Friend the Member for Makerfield (Yvonne Fovargue), they are worried about that. They also see the sustainability and transformation plans ruining our NHS.

What is missing from this Queen’s Speech is as important as what is in it. The Government say that they are committed to equality, but many of us know that the fight for equality is not just about defending existing rights but about the advances that need to be made. It is women from Northern Ireland who will pay the price for the coalition deal that the Government have made unless we in this House speak up. The ruling in June this year was very clear that those women were being discriminated against as UK taxpayers in their access to abortion rights. The Secretary of State, whatever his personal views on the matter, has the ability to provide the funding to enable those women to access services here. Thousands of women have to travel from Northern Ireland, and I do not understand why a decision made in Belfast should influence what happens in my hospital in Walthamstow or in other hospitals across this country.

[Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)]

I respect the hon. Lady’s genuine interest in this subject, but it is important for the House to recognise that this is not a matter for Belfast; it is a matter for NHS England.

[Stella Creasy]

The hon. Gentleman and I are on the same side in agreeing that it is for English and Welsh MPs to decide what happens in English and Welsh hospitals. The Secretary of State needs to listen to the opinions of Members on both sides of the House and act accordingly.

[Tracy Brabin (Batley and Spen) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the cost of an abortion for women from Northern Ireland, at around £900, is dividing the women who have money from those who do not, as well as adding greater stress for women having to make that difficult decision?

[Stella Creasy]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend. The fact is that those women are UK taxpayers contributing towards the cost of the NHS, yet they are unable to use NHS services at all when they are in England. That is the issue we have to resolve. I put the Secretary of State on notice: if he does not change his mind, there are plenty across this House who will support legislation to change it for him. I ask him to do the right thing and ensure that we have equal access to abortion for every UK taxpayer.

The same principle about what is missing from the Queen’s Speech applies to Brexit. I support calls to ensure that membership of the single market is on the table when we negotiate with our European counterparts. With 750,000 jobs in London alone dependent on it, and one in 10 of my neighbours being European nationals, the idea that we would take those issues off the table before we even start talking to our European counterparts seems crazy. The Secretary of State for Brexit says that Brexit will be as complicated as a moon landing. Certainly, many of us thought that he was on another planet, but the Government have to think again about crashing back down to Earth and damaging the economy and the lives of the people of this country through their approach to Brexit.

This country is clearly at a crossroads. There are divisions on many different issues, and there is no doubt that Britain is facing some real horrors. We have seen the horrific events at Grenfell Tower, and the terrorist attacks at Finsbury Park, London Bridge and Manchester. We have a choice: we can either offer this country hope and certainty about what happens next, or we can continue to be divided. We on the Opposition Benches are clear that those who argue that we cannot settle our differences through democracy at the ballot box are wrong. I believe that there is a responsibility on all of us to show every community that their concerns will be heard, and that their causes will be equally valued and listened to. It is certainly my intention to do my bit during this Parliament to make that happen. That is why I have tabled my amendment, and I am so pleased that Members throughout the House have supported it. I hope that Members will continue to listen to the arguments, put personalities aside and start looking at good policies, because the people not only of Walthamstow and Northern Ireland but of Great Britain need and deserve nothing less.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Hunt]

Let me tell the hon. Gentleman that our manifesto was very clear: it referred to an extra £8 billion for the NHS, funded by the strong economy that Labour can never deliver.

When the hon. Gentleman talked about problems in the NHS, and problems in care in the NHS, it sounded as if all those problems had started with the Conservatives. He did not mention the most challenging and difficult problem that his party left behind: the legacy of atrocious care at Mid Staffs, Morecambe Bay and many other trusts. Unlike the last Labour Government, we did not sweep those problems under the carpet. We did the opposite: we introduced the toughest inspection regime in the world. Thirty-five trusts went into special measures, and 20 exited from those special measures. Wrexham Park, George Eliot, Hinchingbrooke, Cambridge, Morecambe Bay, Tameside and East Lancashire went from special measures to good standards. The proportion of NHS patients who say that their care is safe has never been greater.

[Stella Creasy]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. The Secretary of State has just announced a consultation on access to abortion in English hospitals, but as far as anyone is aware, no such consultation exists. Can you inform us whether there will be a written statement on the consultation, given that Members on both sides of the House are concerned about the issue and no information has been given, and whether we will be allowed to test the will of the House on the matter?

[Mr Speaker]

I have had no notification on that subject, but knowing the hon. Lady as I do, I feel sure that she will return to it before long.

Unaccompanied Children (Greece and Italy)

Stella Creasy Excerpts

Thursday 23rd February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Goodwill]

We must certainly be aware that pull factors can be created when statements are made that might encourage people to enlist people traffickers.

[Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does the Minister recognise that the smugglers’ best sales technique is to say that there is no alternative safe, legal route for children to get to safety in the United Kingdom?

[Mr Goodwill]

The whole point of the Government’s approach is to help people in the region, so as to prevent them from making those perilous journeys. In the majority of cases, these are not orphaned children but children whose parents are sending them on a hazardous journey. We have only to look at the mortality in the Mediterranean, where pull factors are encouraging children to make those journeys. Sadly, many of them end up in a watery grave.

Our £10 million refugee children fund for Europe prioritises unaccompanied and separated children. It provides immediate support and specialist care, alongside legal advice and family reunification where possible. In Calais, we responded to a humanitarian need to deliver a complex and urgent operation in tandem with a sovereign member state.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) because although I passionately disagree with his approach to the motion I respect his commitment to tackling trafficking. That echoes what my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern) said: this is not a partisan issue. Members on both sides of the House feel strongly about this matter. Arthur Helton, a well-known American refugee advocate, once said:

“Refugees embody misery and suffering, and they force us to confront terrible chaos and evil.”

In the time available to me, I will argue that refugees also force us to confront something about ourselves and our nationhood. That is why I disagree with the approach advocated by the hon. Member for Wellingborough. I also want to discuss what the Dubs scheme and what has happened to it says about us as a country.

I am sorry that the hon. Member for Mid Derbyshire (Pauline Latham) is no longer here, because she talked about having had no experience at all of visiting the European refugee camps. I spent quite a bit of time in Calais last summer, but I have not been to Greece or Italy. I do not know where the Minister has visited, but we know that a million refugees have come to Europe in the past two years alone and that 2,500 children are in Greece, 1,000 of whom are sleeping rough. There are widespread reports of the poor quality of the conditions in which those children and their families are living. We also know just how few have been transferred here to the UK despite their family links. The same is true in Italy, where thousands are passing through the camps, and there are widespread reports of children suffering human rights abuses. Yet just three have been reunited with family here.

While the motion refers to Greece, Italy, and France, we should not forget the children who are travelling through Europe, because the Dubs scheme was about children who are in Europe and about our responsibility, as part of Europe and as part of the modern world, to those children alongside our European counterparts. We all know that we will probably get abuse on Twitter or Facebook for taking part in this debate, but we sometimes have to advocate what might seem an unpopular opinion. I am saddened that doing our bit is now an unpopular opinion in this country, but that is the debate that we are having. When our politics might feel so futile, children should not suffer, and I agree with much of what the hon. and learned Member for Torridge and West Devon (Mr Cox) said about that. When we passed the Dubs amendment, that was the best of this House. No matter how unpopular the issue might have seemed on social media, we knew in our hearts and in our heads that it was the right thing to do.

That is why closing the Dubs scheme prematurely is the wrong thing to do. There is no evidence that closing the scheme early will do justice to those children and their needs. There is no evidence for the push or pull factors in this process; there is only supposition. We are not talking about a migrant crisis; we are talking about a refugee crisis—60 million people are fleeing persecution. We should call it a refugee crisis and not pretend that it is the same as people coming here to work. Above all, after the Government voted down proposals in Committee to treat children using the UN convention on the rights of the child, we should ask ourselves why closing the Dubs scheme took our moral purpose forwards, not backwards—it did not.

The hon. Member for Mid Derbyshire talked about other countries and their responsibilities, and I agree with her. We should all be doing more, but because one country is not doing enough does not absolve us of doing our bit. That is the problem. How can we look Turkey in the eye when it is taking 2.8 million Syrian refugees and just 3,000 have come to the UK in the past year alone? The promise of the Dubs scheme is what we should speak up for. Children got on buses to go to centres on a promise and a pledge from the British authorities to treat them fairly, but just two days later the Home Office sneaked out guidance saying that half of them would not even be considered due to their nationality, not their need. Those children are languishing in Dunkirk because they have lost all hope. That is not British. That is not a popular opinion that we should uphold.

I will join other Members in tabling amendments to the Children and Social Work Bill to try to reopen the Dubs scheme, to try to hold the Government to account for what we promised a year ago that we would do, and not to let the Minister get away with claiming that it was said in the small print that we should leave these children languishing in the mud and that we would abandon them in Italy and in Greece. We did not listen to the French authorities when they said that the scheme should continue or to the UK’s Independent Anti-slavery Commissioner, who confirmed that he knows of cases in which the Dubs amendment has helped and of children who were being exploited but are now safe. We cannot be confident that there are not more of those children, just as we cannot be confident that there are not more local authorities that will step up to the plate. Indeed, when I spoke to my own local authority today, I was proud to hear of the work it is doing to take refugees and its commitment to working with other local authorities.

We have to confront the fact that our nation has to do its bit, alongside other European nations. We can either be followers or leaders in that process. Whatever the hon. Member for Mid Derbyshire has to tell herself about this issue so that she can sleep at night, let her tell herself that. Let us not decry these children but stand up for them, because that is the best tradition, that is what will keep them safe and that is what will do justice to this House and this country.

Unaccompanied Child Refugees

Stella Creasy Excerpts

Thursday 9th February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Amber Rudd]

I know that my hon. Friend cares a lot about this issue, just as I and this Government do. That is why we have made substantial commitments to help children from the region and to help 20,000 Syrians to come over here. I can say that we are transferring 100 people under the Syrian scheme just today. We will continue to step up and show the world that the UK is doing the right thing by helping these families and children.

I disagree with my hon. Friend and some Opposition Members on one thing. At the time of the amendment, it was made perfectly clear that a number needed to be set and that a number would be set. We have stuck to the letter and spirit of the amendment.

[Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Home Secretary says that she has talked to the French authorities and that they want to stop the Dubs scheme. An average of 50 children every day are going back to Calais and the camps. Does the Home Secretary recognise that the policy clearly is not working? What does she think will happen to those kids now that she has closed the door on them?

[Amber Rudd]

I ask the hon. Lady to consider why the children are going back to the camps rather than staying in the centres the French have taken them to in order to process them. Perhaps it is because they think that they will be able to move to the UK. Does that help them? It does not. What will help those children is if they have their claims processed in France, rather than going back to Calais and the mud. I am sure that she would not want that, just as I do not.

Refugee Family Reunion (Immigration Rules)

Stella Creasy Excerpts

Tuesday 29th November 2016 Westminster Hall

[Thangam Debbonaire]

I acknowledge that it is a two-way process. That is important, but there is a lot more we can do.

Someone fleeing war, torture or conflict may have lost relatives or been separated from parents or children. They may have been cared for by an aunt or an older sibling. They may have a wider idea of family than the nuclear family of western social policy. As the hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West said, their children may have reached 18 by the time their status is confirmed, but they may still need protection or be dependent. If refugee family reunion rules in the UK are to ensure the security of refugees’ family members and family unity, they must address relationships of dependence beyond those currently permitted.

[Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend is making an incredibly powerful case. The reason why people run needs to be at the heart of how we do our refugee policy. Nobody decides to leave their family lightly. We need to counter the idea that one member of a family is at risk but another is not to understand how to have a dignified and humane approach to refugees.

[Thangam Debbonaire]

I agree. I find it difficult to understand why a child who has come from a place that is deemed unsafe for them to go back to cannot simply bring their parents here.

In July, the Home Office published updated guidance on refugee family reunion, which set out details of types of cases where exceptional circumstances may apply—for example, in the case of dependent children over the age of 18. It is important that there are exceptional circumstances, and it is a welcome sign that the Government recognise the importance of family reunion, but it is not enough. People are usually granted leave to remain in exceptional circumstances for only 33 months, and they may be subject to other restrictions to which those granted refugee status are not subject. Those restrictions are left to the discretion of Home Office officials, which does not give them the certainty that a change in the rules would provide.

The Home Affairs Committee, in HC 151, its sixth report of this parliamentary Session, reviewed the work of the immigration directorates:

“It seems to us perverse that children who have been granted refugee status in the UK are not then allowed to bring their close family to join them in the same way as an adult would be able to do. The right to live safely with family should apply to child refugees just as it does to adults. The Government should amend the immigration rules to allow refugee children to act as sponsors for their close family.”

I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) for that work.

The same Committee, in HC 24, its seventh report of this Session, on the migration crisis, stated:

“Family reunion of migrants has been shown to have benefits in terms of integration and support networks, in addition to the human rights requirements of allowing families to be together, and there is clear scope for further measures to facilitate women and children joining husbands, fathers and other male relatives who have reached the UK…We also recommend that the UK broaden the scope of family reunion rules”.

I therefore support the Home Affairs Committee, the Refugee Council, Refugee Action, Amnesty International, the British Red Cross and many others, and call on the UK Government to end the discrimination against children, allowing those recognised as refugees the right to be joined in this country by other family members. Further, the definition of “family” should be expanded to include a wider range of family members. I recognise that that is challenging, but those people have come from war zones.

Our system needs to be properly implemented to fulfil our legal and moral obligations. The effect of cuts to legal aid is that refugees and UK citizens struggle to be reunited with their family members. Legal aid for specialist legal help for family reunion was cut by the coalition Government in 2013, on the grounds that it was considered a straightforward immigration matter that did not warrant the need for specialist legal support. The evidence, however, from the British Red Cross, the Refugee Council, Women for Refugee Women and my own caseload shows that many of the cases are far from straightforward—they are complex and require specialist legal advisers. Given what is at stake for families, there should be legal aid provision to assist refugees making family reunion applications.

Furthermore, those refugees who have been granted citizenship cannot sponsor family members in the same way as those only with refugee status. That seems particularly harsh. They are subject to the same minimum income and other requirements of the spousal visa process as other UK citizens. I understand why that has happened, but it is difficult for newly arrived people to meet such conditions—for those who have arrived here from war zones, it seems unnecessarily harsh. I therefore ask the Government, after their review of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012, to reinstate the provision of legal aid in family reunion cases. Will the Minister comment on that?

I also ask the Government to expand the scope of family reunion so that those who have been granted UK citizenship, or who were born UK citizens, can sponsor family members in the same way as those with refugee status. I further ask that they be granted legal aid in the same way.

Rather than simply turning down an application if there is not enough information, it would be helpful if the Home Office asked for more information. The Refugee Council reported to me that applicants are not being given the opportunity to submit further evidence for their application when their supporting documentation is deemed insufficient. They are simply told that their application has been turned down, which forces them into lengthy and costly appeals processes. During that time, refugees who want to come here continue to live in precarious conditions, often in a third country—for example, if they have fled Syria, they might be in a camp in a neighbouring country such as Lebanon.

That would save the Government money on the appeals process and, most importantly, it would end the practice of leaving families stuck in vulnerable and precarious situations for months on end, waiting for an appeal to be heard. I therefore call on the Government to revise their practice guidance to officials carrying out the process and to move to asking for more information, rather than simply rejecting a family if there is insufficient information.

Demonstrating a relationship involves further complications. In applications for a sponsor’s spouse, whether through marriage or civil partnership, as well as an unmarried partner, the applicant must demonstrate a “subsisting relationship” that preceded the sponsor’s application for asylum, as well as the intention to live together permanently. Again, I understand why that has come about, but I hope that the Minister accepts that relationships and marriages happen, and children are born, while refugees remain in third countries awaiting decisions on resettlement. The rules exclude such families from reuniting, because they are deemed to be post-flight families.

For unmarried and same-sex partners, applications must also demonstrate that the couple

“have been living together in a relationship akin to marriage or civil partnership which has subsisted for two years or more.”

Again, I ask the Government to recognise that resettled refugees are likely to form family relationships during the often lengthy period between their flight from their country of origin and their resettlement in the UK. I ask the Government to revise their rules accordingly.

The process should be safe. The British Red Cross report, “Not So Straightforward”, which I mentioned earlier, described how, although the initial application for family reunion can be made online, the following process requires family members wishing to join relatives here in the UK to travel to their closest visa application centre. The report highlighted examples of families risking their lives to travel to an embassy, crossing conflict zones, or of people being turned away from the embassy when they arrived, even when they had appointments. I therefore ask the Government to change the rules so that the process is safer, by allowing refugees in the UK to submit the family reunion documents, rather than forcing their family members to make journeys that are often costly and dangerous.

In conclusion, I ask the Government to consider eight requests, and I hope that the Minister will be able to give an answer to some, or at least an indication of the direction of travel. If he cannot grant my requests, will he agree to meet me in any case to discuss them further?

First, will the Government allow children recognised as refugees the right to be joined here in the UK by family members? Secondly, will the Government expand the definition of family to include a wider range of family members? Thirdly, will the Government reinstate the provision of legal aid in family reunion cases? Fourthly, will the Government expand the scope of refugee family reunion so that those who have been granted UK citizenship can sponsor family members in the same way as those with refugee status? Fifthly, will the Government grant legal aid to refugees with UK citizenship? Sixthly, will the Government revise the guidance so that officials ask for more information, rather than simply rejecting a family’s application because of insufficient information? Seventhly, will the Government recognise that resettled refugees are likely to form family relationships during the often lengthy period between flight and resettlement, and revise the rules accordingly? Eighthly, will the Government change the rules, so that the process is safer, by allowing refugees in the UK to submit the family reunion documents?

Those people have fled from war, persecution and torture. Many of them have gone through terrible journeys to reach sanctuary in the UK. Many are children. Surely it is not too much to ask that they are allowed to be reunited quickly, safely and easily with their families. After all, is that not what we would want if it happened to us?

[Owen Thompson (Midlothian) (SNP)]

I thank the hon. Member for Bristol West (Thangam Debbonaire) for securing this important debate, and I commend her for it. The topic is important to my constituents, as it is to her and, of course, to the many refugee families and lone children throughout the world.

The UK Government have made some progress in expediting the move of refugee children to the UK from the fallout of the Calais “jungle” camp shutdown. That has to be welcome to an extent, but the lack of speed and organisation has been disappointing. While delays continue, children go missing, fall victim to traffickers, are bought and sold, are damaged, and are alone.

[Stella Creasy]

Does the hon. Gentleman share my concern that the Government seem to be changing the rules retrospectively on the children whom we take from Calais, specifying certain countries rather than persecution as the question at the heart of the issue? Just as this debate is about how to help those being persecuted, it is important that we as a country do not renege on our commitments.

[Owen Thompson]

I very much agree with the hon. Lady. At times, it feels like a feast of moving goalposts, which does not help those in most need of the support that we should be giving them. The Government need to do more to speed up the process of helping.

Lone children wandering Europe, who are now estimated to number in the hundreds of thousands, will not reduce in number if we ignore the situation in Syria. That is why we must take a joined-up approach and not separate the problems. I am confident that the Minister will tell us about how the Government are putting more money into support for refugees than any other country in Europe, but simply throwing money at a problem is not enough. We need to accommodate the points made by the hon. Member for Bristol West and to change our system, taking into account individual circumstances, which would make a real difference to families and, most importantly, those young people who are so often left alone.

I recently raised in the House the case of one of my constituents who had lost their son. He had not been known to the family for more than a couple of years and was sadly thought to be dead. Luckily, we found that he was still alive. However, having had the joy of discovering that, the family then had to battle to bring him to join them in Scotland. At one point, they did not know whether they would ever see him again. I commend the Home Office for the support that it has given the family. Although it took a bit of time to arrive, that support has been productive, and we are hopeful that there will be a positive outcome to that case in the near future. The Home Office must work with all the agencies on the ground that do such an amazing job to help children who are alone in a war zone. We need to do so much more to ensure that the process of bringing those young people back to join their families is much faster.

The humanitarian situation in the region affected by the Syrian conflict is vast and growing. Atrocities happen every minute of every day, and the children caught up in that situation who so often flash up on our TV screens and social media feeds sadly face many more years of conflict, pain and hurt before there is any end in sight to that conflict. It is so sad to consider that children and families are separated.

We must do what we can now. We must act swiftly and with compassion. We must not continue waiting for child refugees to come knocking at our door; doing so leaves them with little option but to make dangerous journeys, often with dangerous people who do nothing but profit and prioritise money over their safety. Where it is safe to do so, we must actively seek out displaced families and children in conflict zones. We must make more of an effort before an entire generation of children is put at risk of losing the care of their families, many of whom have been affected by emergencies and cannot support their children without help.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ms Abbott]

The right hon. Gentleman makes an important point. If we regard these people as people, then gaining refugee status is only the beginning, as has been said. What they need around them, if at all possible, is their family. That is what the unfair and inappropriate state of family reunion rules militates against.

I remind the House of the final act of the United Nations conference of plenipotentiaries on the status of refugees and stateless persons, which provided that signatories—we are one—take

“the necessary measures for the protection of the refugee’s family”,

with particular reference to

“Ensuring that the unity of the refugee’s family is maintained”

and

“The protection of refugees who are minors”.

I think the summation of this debate so far is that we are not taking the necessary measures for the protection of the refugee’s family.

Article 3 of the 1989 UN convention on the rights of the child states that the interests of the child must always be the primary consideration in all actions relating to them. The Home Office guidance from 2009, “Every Child Matters”, says that there is a statutory duty to promote the welfare of children, which must also apply to children overseas. I have dealt with so many cases down the years in which it was quite clear that the welfare of the children overseas was the last thing on the Home Office’s mind. As we have heard, many campaigners, non-governmental organisations and immigration lawyers argue that the current UK legislation and practice may meet the letter of the UN convention but not the spirit. As I think most of us know, there is scope to allow an application outside of the immigration rules, but in my experience that is an extremely rare occurrence.

The then Immigration Minister, the right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (James Brokenshire), argued in the House in 2015 both that the UK rules were more fairly drawn than other countries and—this is the essence of the problem in fairly treating refugees—that to widen them would act as a pull factor for more refugees. That is what is behind the Home Office’s thinking. The Dublin III regulations are designed to allow greater access for child refugees, but they are widely regarded as bureaucratic and unwieldy, and the same verdict is widely shared of the application form itself. The Dubs amendment, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) referred, was designed to provide access in the interests of the child. However, it now seems very unlikely to meet its designated target of 3,000 child refugees from the encampment in Calais. We have let those children down, and we have let those Members of the Lords and the Commons who supported the Dubs amendment down.

As the Minister will no doubt tell us, there is a series of long-established refugee resettlement schemes, such as the mandate and gateway schemes, and the Syrian vulnerable persons scheme. The Government have also recently announced a vulnerable child resettlement scheme—I dare say we will hear about too. However, the effect of those various ad hoc schemes is to add to the complexity and bureaucracy, as any of us who have dealt with refugees will know, and to exacerbate inconsistencies—Syrian children, but not Yemeni or Afghan children.

I am quite clear that the reason why the existing regime for refugee family reunion seems unfair and incoherent and not in the spirit of the UN conventions that we have signed has to do with the toxic debate on immigration that we are having. In the post-Brexit era, and in the era of Trump, I cannot let the issue of the general debate on migration go past.

[Stella Creasy]

Does my hon. Friend agree that this is not a debate that makes sense in Britain? Actually, we have had a proud tradition of taking and supporting refugees in this country. I am mindful that Creasy, like Farage, is a Huguenot surname, and that all of us come from communities that have benefited from the input of refugees. That is the true British, patriotic tradition that we should be supporting.

[Ms Abbott]

My hon. Friend is completely correct: this is a not a debate that makes sense in the UK any more than it makes sense in the US—a country that was built on immigration, more than any other society that can be named. However, because migrants, refugees, asylum seekers and so on are conflated in the popular narrative, we are where we are.

With Brexit, Trump and the debate about the conditions under which we leave or do not leave the European Union, there is no doubt that the issue of migration is going to come up over and over again. I urge Members who have shown such sympathy and compassion to refugees, and on family reunions specifically, to hold their nerve on the question of immigration. It is so important that as politicians we have a debate on immigration that is based on the facts, not on urban myth. It is so important that we do not propagate notions that immigrants in some general sense drive down wages, when it is in fact predatory employers who drive down wages. It is so important that we do not join UKIP in the gutter when talking about migrants and refugees.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bristol West made eight very important points. I want to leave the Minister plenty of time to respond to each of them—not with waffle, not by trying to change the subject and not by referring to general things the Government may have done in the past. I say to the House that these are difficult times to argue for fair treatment for asylum seekers, refugees and immigrants, but precisely because it is a difficult time, it is so important that those of us who feel able to should stand up and be counted. After all, the point about refugees is that they are not just figures on a Home Office briefing; they are not just images on a television screen; they are not just the subject of Nigel Farage’s speeches—they are people, and they deserve to be treated as people in a fair and humane fashion.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Goodwill]

I will make a little progress, otherwise I will not be able to answer the points made during the debate, given the time constraints.

In July, the Home Office published revised guidance on the types of cases that may benefit from a grant of leave outside the rules in exceptional circumstances, including adult dependent sons or daughters over the age of 18 who are not leading an independent life and are living in a conflict zone. The new guidance also provides more clarity for applicants and their sponsors, so that they can better understand the process and what is expected of them. I do not believe that widening the definition of family is practical or indeed necessary, especially as the numbers of people granted a family reunion visa are likely to increase in line with the numbers of recognised refugees in the UK.

A balance has to be struck between reuniting families quickly and not creating a situation where the UK becomes the destination of choice, with family members and children in particular being encouraged or even forced to leave their country and risk hazardous journeys to the UK. They should instead claim asylum in the first safe country they reach.

[Stella Creasy]

More of us might have sympathy for the Minister’s argument about a pull factor were it not for the fact that only the UK and Denmark put this restriction in. Surely if there were a pull factor, it would be coming from other countries. Does he have any evidence that other countries offering this form of family reunification has been a pull factor? If not, I think it is time to put this straw argument to bed.

[Mr Goodwill]

The point was made by the hon. Member for Glasgow North East (Anne McLaughlin) that if children could sponsor parents, it would not be a pull factor. I point out that Eurostat figures show that in 2015, there were 35,250 claims from unaccompanied minors in Sweden and 14,400 claims from unaccompanied minors in Germany. Those are the countries with the highest number of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children and the most welcoming asylum policies.

We must not inadvertently create a situation where parents are incentivised to place their children’s lives in the hands of traffickers or criminal gangs and risk dangerous journeys to Europe. Indeed, I was in Nigeria over the summer and had that precise point made to me by those whom I met there. The Government’s priority is to provide humanitarian aid to those most in need in the regions affected by conflict. We have pledged £2.3 billion in humanitarian aid to Syria and neighbouring countries. We are also providing nearly £65 million in response to the Mediterranean migration crisis.

The Government remain strongly committed to resettlement. We are on track to resettle 20,000 Syrians by 2020, and there will be an update on those figures later in the week. That is in addition to the vulnerable children’s resettlement scheme, which will resettle up to 3,000 children and individuals at risk by 2020, and our long-standing gateway and mandate schemes, which the shadow Immigration Minister mentioned. There is no limit to the number of refugees who can be resettled under the mandate scheme, and individuals with close family ties in the UK may be eligible. That route also allows wider family members to be resettled in exceptional circumstances.

The hon. Member for Bristol West mentioned the time taken to grant asylum claims. I point out to the House that we have turned asylum performance around. Since the end of 2014, we have consistently met our ambition of deciding 98% of straightforward cases within six months. We are committed to improving the process for those applying for family reunion, and my officials have been working with the British Red Cross to ensure that the application process is as smooth as possible and decisions are made in a timely fashion, to ensure that families are separated for the shortest possible time. In 2015, the Home Office was deciding family reunion applications within an average of 40 days.

I have met the chief executive of the British Red Cross, Mike Adamson, to discuss many of the issues we have debated today, and my officials are looking at what more we can do to improve our service to those applying for family reunion, including redesigning the application form. A simpler application form, as well as the improved guidance, will help applicants better to understand the family reunion process.

There have been calls, including today, for legal aid to be made available for family reunion applications, but I do not believe, with the changes we have made and continue to make, that it is necessary. Applications for family reunion are free of charge, and in deciding how to allocate legal aid support, the Government must be mindful that this is all taxpayers’ money.

UK Visas and Immigration is formulating plans to consolidate decision making for family reunion applications into one team based in the United Kingdom. That work was initiated following the inspection of family reunion applications by the independent chief inspector of borders and immigration. I am grateful to David Bolt for conducting such a thorough inspection. I assure the House that the Home Office treats all applications for family reunion with compassion and sensitivity and will continue to do so. The Government have accepted all the recommendations in the chief inspector’s report and work is under way to implement them.

I want to reassure Members that I have listened carefully to the arguments put forward today in favour of widening the family reunion criteria. The Government recognise the important principle of family unity, but our policies must be balanced, and we must not inadvertently and perversely create a situation in which families see an advantage in sending people ahead, in particular children, putting their lives at risk by attempting perilous journeys into and across Europe: tragically, such journeys have cost many lives. I therefore remain of the view that widening the criteria to include many other categories of people is neither practical nor sustainable.

Oral Answers to Questions

Stella Creasy Excerpts

Monday 31st October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Goodwill]

We are assisting with that transfer process, and once those children are in a place of safety away from the people traffickers who would seek to exploit them, we will be able to carry out that work in a more methodical way. We hope to have the process completed within weeks.

[Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

Further to the question from my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), we know that there are currently 30 young girls, some as young as under 12, in the container camp in Calais. Can the Minister confirm that the Home Office staff left the site on Saturday? If so, when will they go back and restart the rescue of those children and their transfer to the UK?

[Mr Goodwill]

We must remember at all times that the camp is in France. We must work closely with our colleagues in the French authorities to ensure that children are removed from the container camp and taken to a place of safety where they can be processed in a more orderly way.

Calais

Stella Creasy Excerpts

Monday 24th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Amber Rudd]

My hon. Friend is right that we are committed to prioritising the most vulnerable, which means the youngest and minors at risk of sexual exploitation. We will always make sure that we do that. We are putting them at the front of the queue in terms of interviewing. Frankly, these are the ones who are most likely to qualify under the Dubs amendment, where it becomes clear that they are better served by being in the UK.

[Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

I associate myself with the comments of the new Home Affairs Committee Chair about the progress being made. I want to pick up what the Home Secretary said about the reports from the camp today and the chaos that we are seeing there as it is being closed. I have details with me of 49 children under the age of 13 who the voluntary agencies say could not register at the warehouse today. I would be happy to share those details directly with the Home Secretary and her officials. Will she give me a personal assurance that she will investigate the fate of those 49, including three who are under the age of 11? Will she give an assurance that any child brought here under this legal process will not be put in a detention centre here in the UK?

[Amber Rudd]

I am surprised to hear the hon. Lady talk about a detention centre. We are making sure that all the children who come over here are looked after in a way that we, as a proud and compassionate nation, can rightly call the best way. If she has any additional information, she is welcome to send it to me or to hand it to the Minister for Immigration at the end of this statement. We have 36 staff on the ground who have gone over during the past few weeks specifically to do this. They are engaged with the NGOs as well. There is no “them and us” feeling in the camp. We all have the same aims, and I would ask her to bear that in mind. We want to get the youngest children and the most vulnerable out. There is nothing but good will and good intent on this side to make sure that we can achieve that.

Calais Jungle

Stella Creasy Excerpts

Monday 10th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Home Secretary will be aware that there is a great deal of concern in the House today about the numbers. The voluntary sector has identified for her Department 387 children as being eligible to come here under Dublin III and the Dubs amendment, for example, but there is a wait of more than three months before many can even lodge an asylum claim in France; I do not think the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) is aware of that fact. This country is spending three times as much on building a wall to block those children from coming here as on trying to prevent them from being trafficked. Given the Secretary of State’s welcome commitment to getting things moving, will she reverse that ratio and put more money into the administration needed to process the papers, so that we can get those children out of that hellhole today?

[Amber Rudd]

I understand and share the hon. Lady’s genuine passion and commitment to this subject. However, it is not a lack of finances for dealing with the paperwork that has been slowing things up; this is a question of ensuring that the French engage with us, so that we can commit to getting the numbers through that we want. For instance, we have already referred to the 200 agreed under the Dublin agreement, and to the additional number under the Dubs amendment, but the French have begun to work with us on this only in the past three weeks. They are now focused on wanting us to take children from the camps, because they now want to clear the camps. I can confidently tell the hon. Lady that there will be a remarkable increase in our ability to take those children over and to process their claims, not because of money, but because of the political will to get it done.

Oral Answers to Questions

Stella Creasy Excerpts

Monday 5th September 2016 Commons Chamber

[Amber Rudd]

My hon. Friend is right to refer to the fine line and to the fact that the camp is a place of terror and danger. We will follow up on our obligations, and as I said in answer to an earlier question, we are now managing to move more quickly. I ask him not to underestimate the difficulty sometimes of dealing with French law and EU law. We cannot simply move in and take action; we must act within the law, which is always in the best interests of the child.

[Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

I welcome the Home Secretary to her new role. I was in Calais at the weekend for the second time this summer. Both times I met some of the 800 young unaccompanied children in that camp—children who told me that in the many months they have been there they have not spoken to a single Government official. I met a pregnant woman who said that she had tried to claim asylum in France, but the system is so broken that she was told it would be months before they would even begin to process her application. These people are living in hell because of a lack of bureaucracy. My right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) is absolutely right. They need our safeguarding, because they are sleeping in tents with strange men. Will the Home Secretary meet me and other MPs affected by this issue and concerned about it to discuss how we can change that?

[Amber Rudd]

I would point out to the hon. Lady that the French have already dispersed 5,000 people from the camp. The Interior Minister has already said that he has plans to make sure, by the end of the year, that the camp is phased out so that everybody can be rehoused. It is important for the children to know, as the adults know, that they are not forced to come to the UK to find a bed; they can claim asylum in France, and the French Government are willing to do that. The hon. Lady should have a care not to encourage unwittingly the traffickers to bring more children to the camps.