Unaccompanied Children (Greece and Italy)

Tom Brake Excerpts

Thursday 23rd February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Alison McGovern]

My right hon. Friend makes a very good point, and one that I will direct to the Minister. It is his responsibility to answer that question today.

The Government made two arguments to justify their decision. I will talk about pull factors later, but first, let me deal with local authority capacity. It is not true that there is no space left for Dubs children in local authority care. The Home Office cannot make that claim because it has not even asked about Dubs spaces in future. Let us consider Lewisham. It said that it can take 23 children, but it has received just one. How many places did local authorities offer for Dubs children? Does the Home Office know? If not, how can Ministers say that there are no places left? Will the Minister publish the figures? Will he tell us how many children each local authority has taken, so that civil society groups and Members of Parliament can work with them to try to get more spaces? The House deserves answers. There is much more to be done with local authorities to resettle children under the Dubs scheme. We cannot and should not give up.

[Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)]

Would the hon. Lady, like me and I am sure other Members, like to know from the Government how many people have been allowed to come under the equivalent of the Canada sponsorship scheme? As I understand it, so far two people have been accommodated under that scheme.

[Alison McGovern]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his question, which, again, the Minister must answer today.

It is deeply depressing to start a debate that was supposed to focus on how to build on the Dubs amendment by having to fight the same fight over again. The debate is about how we can do more for the many unaccompanied child refugees stuck in Greece and Italy. The Minister will talk about the fantastic support that this country offers refugee camps in the middle east and north Africa, how much we spend and how we do not want people to attempt the perilous journey across the sea. I will wholeheartedly agree with him. I am proud of our work overseas. It is right that we do everything possible to look after people in the region and keep them out of the hands of people traffickers who exploit their desperation. Nobody wants people, least of all children, to board those boats and make that crossing. However, we must move beyond those generalities. We are talking about desperate individuals, and hundreds of children do board those boats and end up in Greece and Italy. When they arrive, they remain vulnerable to the same traffickers who put them on the boats in the first place. They are exploited physically and often sexually. They are made to see and endure things that no child should ever have to. Unaccompanied children are the most at risk, and as the conflict continues unabated in Syria and parts of Africa, more children arrive in Europe without an adult to look after them.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Immigration (Mr Robert Goodwill)]

I thank the Members who tabled the motion, and I am grateful to you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for agreeing to allow me, exceptionally, to speak early in the proceedings. I thought it would be helpful if I set out the Government’s position on this important matter at the outset. I hope that, by doing so, I can better inform the debate that will follow, and correct much of what has already been said in the debate and, indeed, in the media.

Britain has a proud record of helping the most vulnerable children who are fleeing conflict and danger. I want to underline this Government’s commitment to supporting, protecting and caring for the most vulnerable asylum-seeking and refugee children affected by the migration crisis. Let me start by making one thing clear: the Government are absolutely and fully committed to helping and supporting the most vulnerable children. In the past year, we have given refuge or other forms of leave to more than 8,000 children, and in the first two weeks of this month alone we have resettled more than 300 refugees in the UK, about half of whom are children. Indeed, just today 80 Syrian refugees arrived in Ulster as part of the Syrian vulnerable person scheme. The Government have certainly not, as some have suggested, closed their doors.

The Government strategy is to resettle the most vulnerable refugees directly from the regions. That is how we stop traffickers and smugglers exploiting vulnerable people and children affected by conflict. By the end of this Parliament, we will have resettled 20,000 Syrian nationals through our Syrian vulnerable person resettlement scheme, one of the biggest resettlement schemes this country has ever undertaken, and a further 3,000 of the most vulnerable children and their families from the middle-east and north Africa region under the vulnerable children’s resettlement scheme. Today, I am pleased to update the House that over 5,400 individuals—slightly more than the figure that was mentioned by the right hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake)—have been resettled under the Syrian vulnerable person scheme since its expansion in October 2015.

[Tom Brake]

I was referring to the Canadian sponsorship scheme. A similar scheme for community groups was supposed to have been set up in the UK, under which, I understand, the royal total of two people have been able to come.

[Mr Goodwill]

I met Canadian representatives when visiting refugee camps in Jordan. We have measures in place, as part of the scheme for the 20,000, to enable community groups to take people to come here. Under the Dublin proposals, if grandparents can show that they can care for children, those children can come here from another EU country. Those children must, of course, claim asylum in the first safe country they reach.

Crucially, our resettlement schemes help to ensure that children do not become unaccompanied. They allow children to be resettled with their family members before they become unaccompanied, and before attempting perilous journeys to Europe.