Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill

Tim Loughton Excerpts

Report stage & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 30th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

First, I declare my interests in the register. Secondly, it is getting rather difficult to talk to so many amendments in the space of six minutes. Perhaps I should have applied for a ten-minute rule Bill beforehand and got all my points in through that. I want to talk primarily to my new clauses 2 and 29. I certainly put on record my support for new clauses 7 to 10 tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis).

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[Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)]

A ten-minute rule Bill would have been good. In respect of new clause 29, which my hon. Friend is also speaking to, the Government will say that the matter is subject to negotiation, and that acting now would pre-empt and tread on that. I always listen with great respect to what he says, and I take a lead from him in many regards. Why is that not the pertinent point?

[Tim Loughton]

I have not actually come on to new clause 29 yet, and other people will speak to that point, but the problem is that the Government position has been weakened. They produced a negotiation document, which now has a discretionary scheme, rather than the mandatory scheme. The EU will be even less likely to want to agree to that, and it is absolutely essential that we have a scheme in place, otherwise on 1 January next year there will be no safe and legal route for the several hundreds of children who have been coming to this country safely to avail themselves of. That is the problem.

New clause 2 would ensure that all looked-after children and care leavers were identified and given status so that they do not become undocumented. Issuing settled status now would prevent another cliff edge in the future. These young people would have to re-apply for settled status in five years’ time, perhaps without the help of the local authority. The evidential burden would be lowered for local authorities applying and for Home Office caseworkers, saving time with the complex application process. The amendment to the process for identification and granting status is time-limited. As set out in the new clause, it would be effective for five years after the settlement scheme deadline, until 30 June 2026.

These are really vulnerable children. We do a great job of looking after them in this country, from which we can take great pride. For goodness’ sake, let us continue being able to do that job and keep them here legally without allowing them to become at risk. This is not about bringing lots of new children into the country—they are already here. We just want to make sure they have representation, recognition and the documentation to ensure that when they grow into adults and apply for a job, it is not all of a sudden found that actually they have no right to be here and they face deportation.

New clause 29—what a sense of déjà vu—was raised many times during the Brexit Bills. We were convinced by Ministers that that was not the appropriate place for it. I accepted that. We were told that it would be in the immigration Bill instead. It is not in the immigration Bill. We have been told that it is going to be down to the negotiations instead. Time is running out; the Dublin III scheme ends in exactly six months’ time, and there is no replacement for it yet.

As I said, the Government published their negotiation document. The most fundamental problem with the scheme that is now being negotiated—it is not guaranteed —is that the text removes all mandatory requirements on the Government to facilitate family reunions and would make a child’s right to join their relatives entirely discretionary. The text intentionally avoids providing rights to children, contains no appeal process and attempts to be beyond the reach of the United Kingdom courts. Other categories of vulnerable refugees, including accompanied children, would lose access to family reunion entirely, and a series of other key safeguards have been removed, including strict deadlines for responses and responsibility for gathering information being on the state rather than the child.

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

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Tim Loughton]

I will—to whoever that was.

[Tim Farron]

I am at the far end of the Chamber, but I thoroughly agree with the hon. Gentleman; I am very close to him when it comes to the point he is making. Obviously, this is a very regrettable state of affairs. Does he agree that it would be right for the Minister, at the Dispatch Box today, to commit the United Kingdom to signing up to the equivalent of Dublin so that children who are here unaccompanied can have their family come and join them, and children from outside this country who are unaccompanied can come and join family members here? That is the right and decent thing to do, and it would be continuing our obligations to those people.

[Tim Loughton]

The hon. Gentleman is right. Actually, the Government have said all along that that is their intention. I have had meetings with many Immigration Ministers over the last few years. I remember going to see the then Immigration Minister, who is now the Northern Ireland Secretary, after Baroness Morgan and I visited Athens with UNICEF. We visited some of the camps out there and saw some of the children who would qualify for this scheme. We were given clear undertakings that it was absolutely the Government’s intention to make sure that after we came out of the EU, when Dublin III no longer covered the United Kingdom, we would have a scheme at least as good as what there is now.

Again, we are talking about just a few hundred children. We are not talking about attracting thousands of children to this country; it is a few hundred specifically identified children—usually through some of our agencies operating in refugee camps and around the world—who have family links in this country. In some cases, those will be their only family links. They may have lost their parents in the civil war in Syria; they may be at the hands of people traffickers, fleeing abuse, fleeing war zones or whatever, and it may be that a brother, an uncle or an aunt is the only family member they have left and that that person is legally in the United Kingdom. Those are some of the most vulnerable children whom we have done a fantastic job of giving a safe home to in recent years, and it is essential that we carry that scheme on. It is a mandatory scheme, and it is a scheme of which we should be hugely proud.

That is why now is the time for new clause 29. We have had fob-offs, frankly, over recent years about why it would not be appropriate to put this in legislation. We need a very clear statement and intent from the Government today that there will be a scheme in operation on 1 January. I know that it depends on negotiations, but if all else fails, we can put in place our own scheme that is at least as good as Dublin. That is what the new clause tries to achieve.

We have a great record in this area. We have taken almost 20,000 refugees under the Syrian scheme. We targeted 20,000; we have actually taken 19,768. We have invested more than £2.3 billion in Syrian refugees—more than any other country in the EU. We have filled the 480 Dubs places. We have a great record, so why on earth would we not want to make sure that we continue that great record for some of the most vulnerable children fleeing from danger, whom we have been able to afford safe and legal passage to join relatives in the United Kingdom?

That is what the new clause asks for. We have to do better. I and my constituents will not be able to understand it if we fail to give a strong commitment that this country continues to want to do the best by those really vulnerable children. For that reason, I support new clause 29 as well.

[Holly Lynch (Halifax) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to return to the Chamber for the Report stage of this important Bill and to follow the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton). I will return later to the merits of new clauses 2 and 29, but I will focus my comments on the merits of new clauses 13 to 15, tabled by the Leader of the Opposition. I will also outline our support for several other new clauses that have appeal across the Labour Benches, not least new clause 1, the lead amendment in this group.

I am sorry that we could not persuade the Government to engage further with us on any of the amendments or new clauses that we tabled in Committee, but we have the opportunity on Report to make the case again for different approaches in certain areas. In Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) spoke to new clause 13, which called on the Government to review “no recourse to public funds” with a focus on vulnerable groups, including those with children and victims of domestic violence. We had hoped that such a review would establish an evidence base allowing for a more informed parliamentary discussion on the broader issue.

In the immediate term, we have already called for “no recourse to public funds” to be suspended for the duration of the coronavirus crisis. On 21 April, we asked the Government to lift NRPF as a condition on a person’s migration status, in order to ensure that nobody was left behind in the public health effort undertaken to fight against coronavirus.

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Thirdly, to reassure Members that acceptable progress is being made to identify and trigger the applications of all eligible EU children in care and care leavers up to the point of transition on 31 December this year, I would ask my hon. Friend to provide updates to the House both this autumn and again early next year, so that we can be clear that sufficient progress has been made.

[Tim Loughton]

As my hon. Friend and I have both done the same job, I think we appreciate the real problems that social workers and local authorities are having in identifying these children. Does he agree with me that part of the problem is that the Department for Education does not routinely collect data on the nationality of the children it looks after in the first place? Is it not essential that that is the very minimum that needs to happen if we are to identify all of those children who would be covered by this scheme?

[Edward Timpson]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, and he is right. When one is trying to understand the consequences of the actions one takes as a Minister—as we heard in the statement earlier from the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk)—the enrichment of data can help us appreciate whether we are making good progress. In the independent school exclusions review that I carried out for the Government last year, a lot of my recommendations were about getting better data about the children in our systems, why they are there and how we can better track them, so that we know we are making good decisions on their behalf. I agree that that information would be relevant to the considerations under new clause 2.

It is important that we get this right. The corporate parenting principles that we legislated for in 2017 are designed for circumstances just like these. Please can we make sure that we live up to them?

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[Richard Fuller]

I am very glad that I sat in on this debate today to learn the origins of the hostile environment. We learned today that the author of the hostile environment was none other than the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne), the Labour candidate to be Mayor of the West Midlands. That is right. He is the author of the hostile environment for immigration. We have learned that today.

The second reason I wanted to contribute today was to be able to say thank you to my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary for bringing forward the points-based system for immigration. Like her, I felt that the opportunity to bring forward an immigration system that did not discriminate based on the origins of where someone came from was one of the strong reasons to support Brexit in the referendum. I am pleased that she has confounded her critics by coming forward so quickly in this Parliament with a new Bill that does precisely that. She knows, and many Members here know, that many areas of the Home Office do not work well, and I am pleased she has started there. Now let us turn to some other areas.

I will turn to what I can only describe as a shameful briefing note on immigration detention put out by the Home Office earlier today. In that note, the Home Office claims that 97% of the people in immigration detention were foreign national offenders. Do they think we are stupid? Do they not think we understand that most of the people in immigration detention have been put out of the detention estate during covid-19?

The note goes on to describe in the most lurid details what may be the case about the backgrounds of individuals, forgetting all those other people who have been put through immigration detention who have perfectly legitimate cases to remain in this country and who may have been victims of communal rape or child trafficking. It is a shameful document that was put out by the Home Office today, and that is why I am very pleased to support the new clauses in the name of my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) that deal with 28 days as a limit on detention.

[Tim Loughton]

My hon. Friend gets it absolutely right about the misinformation that has been dispatched this morning. Is it not the case that a six-month grace period would be the result of the new clause? Those people would not be put out on the streets from the detention centre. The problem is that 63% of those in detention centres are released back into the community because the process has failed, and that includes serious sex offenders, rapists and other serious criminals, so it is happening now and not as a result of what the new clause would achieve.

[Richard Fuller]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, particularly in stressing that the issue is not the people but the process: it is the process that does not work. An immigration detention estate is a manifestation of a completely failed process that fails the person coming to this country right from the start. We should not have an immigration detention estate; we should not have it at all. We only have it because of the accumulated errors of the Home Office going back well over a decade, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) said.

Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill

Tim Loughton Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments & Ping Pong & Ping Pong: House of Commons
Monday 19th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Carmichael]

That is indeed the case. However, the rhetoric and the reality do not always provide a perfect match in this regard. But in fairness, and at the risk of playing with semantics, it would not be that difficult to achieve a more compassionate system because we are currently starting from an exceptionally low base. At the end of June this year, even in the midst of the pandemic, there were 40 people who had been in detention for over a year and four people who had been in detention for more than two years. This has particular importance when one considers the other areas that we have discussed, such as the right to family reunion for child refugees. To pick up the point from the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) in relation to amendment 9, I endorse his views on human trafficking. The problem in all these cases is that we do not get upstream because we do not get the necessary co-operation from the victims themselves. If the focus in our system was on catching those who are responsible for the trafficking, and not those who are the victims of it, we would be in a much stronger position. The issue of unlimited detention goes right to the heart of that. It is about which end of the telescope we see the problem through.

The amendments that are before the House this evening are all significant improvements. I hope that the Government, on reflection, will find a way to engage with this in a more constructive and compassionate way.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

It is difficult, in six minutes, to do justice to such an important piece of legislation, with such a diverse set of amendments. I want to speak primarily to Lords amendment 3—the old new clause 2 that I proposed on Report—and Lords amendment 4, which is the old new clause 29 on the Dublin replacement. However, I also support Lords amendment 6, previously proposed by my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis), and Lords amendment 9, which my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) spoke so eloquently about.

On Lords amendment 3, we had previous arguments about lots of children in care going under the radar. There are now just eight months to go until the end of the EU settlement scheme. The Home Office originally told us that it estimated that there were some 9,000 EU children in care and care leavers in this country, but now, after a survey completed by 90% of local authorities, it suggests that the figure is under 4,000. Why the drop? At a similar time, it estimated that the number of EU adults who would register to qualify for the EU settlement scheme would be 3 million, but it has turned out to be over 4 million. Why does the number for children in care go down and yet the number for adults has gone up?

These children are of course already in this country. Not a single additional child will be brought into this country under this legislation. It is about regularising status and giving those children safety and giving confirmation to children already in this country. That is why the amendment is still very important. We risk another Windrush scandal for a particularly vulnerable set of children growing up in care who inevitably have more chaotic lifestyles than most people.

Recent research by the charity Coram, “Children left out?”, highlighted the mixed practice among local authorities in identifying and supporting children in care through the EU settlement scheme, with fears that some authorities are making no attempt to identify children in their care who need to regularise their status. Of course, there is no incentive for authorities to regularise that status through citizenship when it costs £1,012, for every child, to do that.

[David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is drawing attention to a very important issue. Does he agree that the crucial point is that a local authority may have the statutory duty as the corporate parent, but if the child does not have documentary evidence proving their nationality—not their residence, which the local authority can prove easily, but their nationality—the local authority is unable to take forward the application at all? I hope the Minister will be able to address that issue when he responds to the debate.

[Tim Loughton]

That is absolutely right. It is very difficult to replace documents, and many people come here without any documents. We are relying on the timescales of high commissions and embassies in various EU countries, and it is not exactly a priority of social workers, who are snowed under with all the other safeguarding work they have to do.

This is a really important amendment. Interestingly, there was a judgment by the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman against Liverpool Council. A care leaver complained that the council had failed to regularise his immigration status and failed to secure him British citizenship and a passport, which meant he could not travel or work. That complaint was upheld. The Government did not vote against the amendment in the Lords, so what has changed between then and tonight? This is a great opportunity for the Government to show why such a provision is necessary, without adding a single additional person to the immigration figures, if that is what they are actually worried about.

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[Karen Bradley]

It is often said that these are older children aged 14, 15 or 16. I have a 14-year-old, and if my 14-year-old did not have me, I would want to know that they could go to one of my family, be that my brothers or my in-laws. Does my hon. Friend agree?

[Tim Loughton]

My right hon. Friend is right. I have met many of these children in camps in Calais, in Zaatari in Jordan and in some of the less well-run camps in Greece. These are real children, bereft of parents in many cases, with just a link in the UK. Without this amendment—without a replacement for Dublin III—those children have no obvious safe and legal route to get to the UK.

The Minister rightly says that we have been very generous in this country through various other schemes, and I agree. Some 7,400 family reunion visas were issued in the year to March, and there is also the vulnerable persons resettlement scheme and the hugely successful Dubs scheme, under which 480 children have come here. Like everybody, I pay tribute to Saint Alf Dubs for the fantastic work he does for this cause. It was a privilege to go to the United Nations and the Zaatari camp in Jordan with him. Of course, the Dubs scheme is full, and none of those other schemes is currently operating. From 1 January, there will be no effective mandatory family reunion scheme either, and there will be no safe and legal route for these children to come to the UK.

I am tough on the illegal migrant channel crossings. I think many of those people who can afford to pay people smugglers are effectively jumping the queue ahead of those who are in refugee camps, who are going through due process and who are abiding by the rules. If we are going to be tough—and, gosh, we need to be tougher on those routes, which line the pockets of people smugglers—we need to make sure we have alternative safe and legal routes for those genuine vulnerable refugees, particularly children, to whom we have a duty of care and can offer a safe haven in this country.

Of course, this has come at the worst time, as we heard from the Labour Front Bencher, after the fires in Lesbos at the beginning of September, in camps that were already five times over capacity, with over 13,000 people residing in a centre built for 2,757. There are now more than 1,600 unaccompanied children on the Greek islands, many whose basic needs are not being met, and many of these children have chronic illnesses. As of last week, there were more than 300 covid cases on Lesbos alone, with a hospital that has capacity for just 50 people. These are deeply vulnerable children, dangerously exposed to people traffickers and other exploitation.

Some 7% of these children are under the age of 14, yet we have no scheme to deal with them, despite having taken many reunification cases earlier in the year for such children. France has taken 350, Portugal 500, and Belgium, Croatia, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania and Slovenia are taking these children. What are we doing about it, Minister? The Government have said we do not have places for them, but more than 30 local authorities have identified 1,400 places if the Government will make the scheme work and will pay the cost of it.

We need a Dubs 2, and we need a family reunion scheme, regardless of Brexit. We need it. We have a great tradition of saving these children; if we do not have it in this Bill, come 1 January, we will have no safe and legal route for very, very vulnerable children.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill

Tim Loughton Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments
Wednesday 4th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I am going to call the Minister at 6.27 pm, and the questions will be put no later than 6.32 pm. There are a number of MPs on the call list, so please show some self-discipline in order that we can get in as many as we can.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

I rise to speak in support of Lords amendment 4B. I was disappointed to hear the Minister dismiss it as just well intentioned. I think it is absolutely essential. With just eight weeks to go before the Dublin arrangements for family reunion fall, we have had the tragic drownings in the channel recently; mercifully, but surprisingly, such cases are rare.

Here we go again. This is the last remaining amendment that has come back from the Lords, and it has done so with a vengeance. It was a big defeat for the Government in the other place, by 320 votes to 242. Lord Dubs has led the charge on this ably and eloquently over many months, and he spoke with huge passion. The debate in the other place was just about financial privilege; as he put it, that

“falls short of being humanitarian and falls short of respecting the opinions of this House.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 21 October 2020; Vol. 806, c. 1595.]

Many in this House think we must do better, and I find it extraordinary that the Government are still digging their heels in for the sake of about 500 highly vulnerable children.

The Government have produced their own amendment. I have no objection to it; it is perfectly innocuous. It commits to a review of safe and legal routes, and that is welcome. It is the least that can be expected, however, because it is what the Government have promised all along in the light of the welcome overhaul of the immigration system and the continued suspension or non-renewal of previous safe and legal routes. Simply adding the Government’s amendment to the Bill will not guarantee the replacement for the Dublin family reunion scheme that we have been promised for so long—despite the fact that, as the hon. Member for Halifax (Holly Lynch) has said, there is no negotiating mandate from EU member states.

The amendment gives no timescale for when measures may be introduced, if they are to be. Neither does it give details about how extensive a replacement scheme may be, given that the Government’s separate refugee family reunion scheme is much more restrictive about family members who can reunite. Part 11 of the rules applies only to pre-flight children seeking to reunite primarily with parents, and provisions on reuniting with uncles or aunts, for example, are subject to very strict criteria and high evidential thresholds.

Let us look at those thresholds by considering the ability of a young teenage boy on the Greek islands to reunite with an aunt or uncle in the UK—a case that we raised with the Minister in the Home Affairs Committee this morning. The Minister made it sound as though that would be no problem, but it will not work in practice for most cases. That child would have to apply under rule 319X, which technically allows children to join uncles, aunts, cousins, siblings or any other family member who is not a parent and who has the refugee status of humanitarian protection. However, the requirements that have to be met are very onerous, and there are strict evidential requirements.

The child would be able to apply under 319X, but only if the uncle or aunt is a refugee, not if they are British or have other status, unlike in the Dublin regulations. The child can apply only if the uncle or aunt can maintain and accommodate them. That is a very high threshold, and it is much higher than the one in Dublin. The child can apply only if they can show that

“there are serious and compelling family or other considerations which make exclusion of the child undesirable”—

that is a very high test that is hard to meet, and there is no such test under the Dublin regulations—

“and suitable arrangements have been made for the child’s care”.

The child can apply only if the uncle or aunt can afford the £388 fee to make the application. The uncle or aunt cannot be a refugee with indefinite leave to remain; they must only have limited leave to remain as a refugee. That is an absurdly high bar to meet, and I suspect the Minister knows it. Frankly, it is no substitute for the safe and legal routes that are available now, which have worked well and have been responsible for saving hundreds of highly vulnerable children.

That was the only alternative scheme that the Minister could offer the Home Affairs Committee this morning. He claimed that some 7,400 refugees—it fell to one of the officials to look this up on the computer in front of them—had been issued family reunion visas in the year to March 2020. But they are from outside the EU. The scheme is welcome, as is the fact that we have brought those people in. The Government are to be applauded for targeting some of the most vulnerable families and children, who are genuine refugees from some really dangerous parts of the world, and that has worked exceedingly well. They are all from outside the EU, however, so the scheme does absolutely nothing for the children we are talking about. As things stand, on 1 January 2021, an unaccompanied child in a squalid French refugee camp or on the streets of Italy,  or any of the 1,600 unaccompanied children on the Greek island of Lesbos—where a refugee camp recently burned down, as the hon. Member for Halifax mentioned —or a child orphaned because their parents were killed by a bomb in Syria, by terrorists in Afghanistan, or by disease or famine in sub-Saharan Africa, will have no obvious mainstream means of applying to join a last remaining sibling, aunt, or other relative in the UK. Safe Passage, to which I pay great tribute for its work on this issue, says that some 40% of the cases that it supports in France are of siblings trying to reunite. That is the reality.

Given that, I am afraid that all the assurances given by the Minister at the Dispatch Box and at this morning’s session of the Home Affairs Committee pale into absolute insignificance and irrelevance. I have set out what the position will be on 1 January 2021, in eight weeks’ time, unless a deal is negotiated and agreed before then—and a deal on a Dublin replacement is not even being discussed at the moment.

I have asked previously for a serious replacement for Dublin III, and a Dubs 2 scheme; the previous Dubs scheme did an extraordinary job of rescuing 480 very vulnerable unaccompanied children from dangerous parts of the world. I ask the Government, as a last-ditch effort to show their good will and commitment to a practical scheme that we know works, to roll over the terms of Dublin, at least until a new scheme is in place. I also ask them to give the go-ahead to the more than 30 councils across the country that have offered places to over 1,400 refugees like these refugee children, and to provide the financing for that.

We are not talking about a huge number of children. We are, however, talking about some of the most vulnerable children, who find themselves in hopeless and dangerous circumstances through no fault of their own—the sort of children we have a proud record of helping, and the sort of children whom we helped through the Dublin scheme, and can continue to help if the Government will make this concession. The Lords amendments would achieve that. Let us not let those children down.

[Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton). We provide safe, legal routes so that fewer people feel compelled to try the more dangerous alternatives, with all the tragic consequences that they can entail, as we saw recently. The simple fact that should determine how we vote tonight is this: if the Government successfully resist Lord Dubs’s amendment, there will be fewer, not more, safe, legal routes for people from the start of January.

Bilateral agreements that might replace some features of Dublin are months, if not years, away. There is no prospect of a negotiated settlement with the EU on this issue by the end of December, so in just a few weeks, people who could previously have reunited with family members in the UK will not be able to. They will turn to people traffickers and smugglers instead, or attempt other dangerous crossings themselves.

The Minister has pointed to the domestic immigration rules on family reunion. While some who will lose rights under Dublin will be able to use those rules, very many will not. Those domestic rules are indeed very different from Dublin and more restricted in scope, and often include significantly more difficult legal tests and evidential hurdles, as the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham set out.

I think the Minister knows that the domestic rules are not a substitute for Dublin, so he pointed to the possibility of a review. I thank him for speaking to me about that earlier this week; we will engage constructively with that, but the offer of a review is too little, too late. It simply holds out the possibility that something might appear further down the line to fill the gap left by the loss of the Dublin rights. First, we should be sceptical about whether anything robust enough will ever appear. Even the Government’s proposal to the EU for a post-transition successor to Dublin was in reality a significant watering down of Dublin, under which children’s rights would be subject to the Government’s discretion and appeal rights would be abolished, while other individuals would lose their rights altogether.

Secondly, even if the Government were to come up with something acceptable down the line after this review, the gap between the start of January and that replacement appearing will be hugely damaging in itself. People are not going to wait to see what might happen. From January, with the safe Dublin route closed, more vulnerable people in Europe with family here in the UK will be tempted by and driven towards the traffickers and the dangerous routes. If the Government want a sensible compromise, and it has already been suggested a couple of times in this debate, at the very least they should offer to keep the Dublin routes open for now until the promised review takes place, and alternative proposals come forward and are approved.