Unaccompanied Child Refugees: Europe

Debate between Tim Farron and Adam Holloway

Thursday 2nd November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

Images of families and children in makeshift refugee camps around Calais have disappeared from the front pages and from our Facebook timelines, but the refugee crisis has not abated across Europe, and we continue to face the biggest humanitarian crisis since the 1940s.

Last week marked one year since the demolition of the Jungle camp. I went to visit it for myself in 2015, as others have done. The experience was both eye-opening and heart-breaking. Conditions were awful, but it was amazing to see the strength and grit of the people living there, despite the unimaginable situation in which they found themselves. They had built themselves a mosque and a church, and set up libraries, language schools and a barber’s shop. It was utterly striking that these people, who had been treated in the most uncivilised way, were now responding with dignity and civilisation.

From spending time with the families and the charity workers who were working tirelessly to provide support and advice to them, it was clear that they felt that the camp was their only option. I met lots of children who were there without adult guardians. For some, their parents had paid traffickers to get them to safety in Europe. Others had lost their parents to conflict or had become separated from them while fleeing.

I was particularly frustrated on behalf of those who were stuck there with family who were already in the United Kingdom. Under EU and UK law, they have a legal right to be here, but complicated bureaucracy and systemic failures mean that it can take up to six months even to register for reunification. The argument goes that they have reached European shores and they are safe, so why do they seem so intent on coming to Britain? Well, those who wish to come to the United Kingdom are a small minority of refugees who are currently in France, but nearly every one of them I spoke to on my visits had this grand view of Britain as a place of decency, safety, freedom and civilisation. If someone has made that kind of journey, crossed seas and taken those risks—let us be blunt—they are not one of life’s spongers. People who have met those refugees know that it is not the pull factor that has brought them here, but the push factor of war and persecution back at home.

[Adam Holloway]

This is absolutely preposterous. The fact is that these very long journeys, which sometimes last many months, cost a great deal of money and most are organised by people smugglers. These are the relatively privileged few; we should be concentrating on the many.

[Tim Farron]

We should concentrate on those who are most in need. I ask the hon. Gentleman to think again about the image of Britain in the mind of the people who seek to come here.