Refugee Family Reunion (Immigration Rules)

Debate between Stella Creasy and Owen Thompson

Tuesday 29th November 2016 Westminster Hall

[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.