Immigration Bill

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Monday 25th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[James Brokenshire]

I was just talking to the Under-Secretary of State for Refugees, my hon. Friend the Member for Watford (Richard Harrington), and he made it clear that that is not true. We will come forward very shortly with proposals on the issue of sponsorship, which is important and which we do want to take forward, but it is important that we get it right. That is precisely what my hon. Friend is doing as part of the vulnerable person resettlement scheme.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

The Minister’s point was effectively that the children who are alone in Greece now are Greece’s problem, but Save the Children has said that 2,000 children are alone in northern Greece and there are fewer than 500 child shelter places for them, and those are full. What does he really want those children to do when they are sleeping rough, being targeted by traffickers and smuggling gangs, and subjected to abuse? Does he really think that that is just Greece’s problem and that we should not do our bit too?

[James Brokenshire]

No, I do not. That is why it is right that we are providing financial aid and assistance in that area. I will come on to deal specifically with that support to underline the important commitment that this country is giving.

--- Later in debate ---

[James Brokenshire]

As I think I have indicated, we are already providing support to the French Government, as the non-governmental organisation France Terre d’Asile has responsibility for identifying children in and around the camps at Calais and making sure that they go into the system so that we can do the child safeguarding, make those connections and see that they are reunited with family. That is why I underline the need to give a clear message to those who have connections to identify and support children so that they go into the French system, because we will act. I think that we have the systems and processes in place now to be able to act effectively. That is why it is important to see that operationalised, so that we are doing what we can, alongside the French Government, our Border Force officers and France Terre d’Asile, to ensure that when children are identified, they are immediately pointed to how they can get into the French system so that we can then act.

[Yvette Cooper]

rose—

[James Brokenshire]

I will give way to the right hon. Lady, as I know of her long-standing interest in this matter.

[Yvette Cooper]

I thank the Minister for giving way once again. On that point, Citizens UK has identified 157 live cases that have been put into the system, but he is saying that only 24 have in fact been accepted, and only half of those have actually made it to Britain. Why are they not all brought here straight away? Why are they still stuck in Calais, cold, living in tents in the mud and at huge risk, when he has accepted that they should be here with family who can care for them?

[James Brokenshire]

We are processing 50 cases, 24 of which we have accepted, but a number of those cases are complicated. It is a question of the safeguarding measures that need to be put in place for the children to be reunited with the families who are here. It is therefore more complex than it is sometimes presented. That is not in any way a desire on the part of the Government, or anyone else, to encourage delay. Rather, it is about the normal child safeguarding measures that I think are appropriate. I say to the right hon. Lady and to Citizens UK that if there are cases that can be linked to families here in the UK, get them into the French system. I make that point again and again, because we stand ready to act and to take charge where there are those links, and to see that if there are children in northern France who are separated from family in the UK, action is taken.

Those processes for family reunion are of course in addition to the unaccompanied asylum-seeking children who make their claims in this country. With over 3,000 asylum applications from unaccompanied children last year, I pay tribute to all those local authorities that, despite the unprecedented pressure on their services, are providing support to those young people. At the same time, we need to shut down the illegal migration routes to Europe that are exploited by human traffickers, who encourage people to risk their lives to make perilous journeys. The Government remain of the view that relocation schemes within Europe risk creating unintended consequences or perverse incentives for people to put their lives into the hands of traffickers. Instead, we are committed to providing safe and legal routes for the most vulnerable refugees to resettle in the UK.

The success of the EU-Turkey migration agreement is a vital opportunity to end the misery and lethal risk that smugglers and organised criminals are causing on a daily basis. We have made an offer of UK support to help implement the EU-Turkey migration agreement. We need to close down illegal crossings from Turkey to Greece and tackle migrant flows upstream. We are offering 75 expert personnel to help with the processing and administration of migrants in Greek reception centres, to act as interpreters, to provide medical support and to bolster our existing team assisting the Commission to ensure that there is effective and efficient co-ordination.

Those teams, which are ready to be deployed, will include experts in supporting vulnerable groups, such as unaccompanied asylum-seeking children, and those trained to tackle people trafficking. That will help to ensure that vulnerable people, including children, are identified and can access asylum and support procedures as quickly as possible. That is in addition to the work undertaken by the Anti-Slavery Commissioner, Kevin Hyland, to visit hotspots and assess what more can be done to ensure that unaccompanied children are protected from traffickers.

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Fuller]

It is a pleasure to follow the SNP spokesman, the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald). I shall address my comments not to the substantive area of debate, amendment 87, but to other Lords amendments. As a result, I will try to limit my contribution, given that many people wish to speak to amendment 87.

Two issues of particular importance to me are, first, amendment 84, on the time limit for immigration detention, and the Government’s proposal, and secondly, amendment 85, on the detention of pregnant women. On amendment 84, I listened carefully to the Minister earlier and to the announcements by the Home Office last week, and on balance, notwithstanding the limitations just mentioned, the combination of the changes, along with the opportunity for Stephen Shaw to review the time limit, as part of his inquiry, in 12 to 18 months, gives me comfort that the Government, though they have not gone as far as I would have wished, have done enough for me to be generally supportive of their approach and certainly not to vote against them.

Unfortunately, on the detention of pregnant women, it is a different matter. Without a doubt, this is a big and welcome change, but for me it is a matter of principle: we should never detain a pregnant woman when we have the choice not to. It was January 2012 when I asked my first question in Parliament about the detention of pregnant women. I only regret that it took me 18 months as a Member to ask those questions—that it took me 18 months to become aware of a vast estate of incarceration and detention that had built up under the last Labour Government and continued under the coalition, and was detaining people in our name for no other reason than that they came here and had not proven their case to stay. Each of those many people—not just pregnant women, but others who were victims of torture and rape, as the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) mentioned—should have had a better and more humane alternative.

To those groups such as Medical Justice, Women for Refugee Women, the Refugee Council and so many others that have tried in the intervening period to persuade the Home Office to move its policy away from the default of detention and a culture of disbelief to something that is understanding of each individual circumstance, the Government’s announcements over the last few weeks are tremendously welcome. They do not go far enough, however.

I can assure the Minister that we will hold him and the Government to account in respect of all the words he has said and all the frameworks he has put in place to ensure that the objectives of the all-party groups in their inquiry into the use of immigration detention are achieved. There is a better alternative to detention: it is called case management, and it means letting people know what their rights are and not leaving them in the community with no one to talk to for month after month. We must engage with these people so they know that they can remain in this country if they can prove their entitlement, and we must provide them with the best possible support and advice to make that case. As I said, we will hold the Minister to account for that.

The campaign had a hashtag, as is common these days; it was called #setherfree. I regret that I cannot say to the women in Yarl’s Wood today that as a result of these changes they will be free. My hope is that we have started to change the direction, and that we are starting the process of taking that valuable phrase “asylum seeker” out of the gutter where it was left, and putting it where it should be as a place of honour—not for the individual, but for the country to which they come to claim that status. This is a judgment about us as much as it is a judgment about the people who come to this country. Let us take this step forward, but let us pressure the Government to do more.

[Yvette Cooper]

I welcome the speech made by the hon. Member for Bedford (Richard Fuller) and pay tribute to the hon. and learned Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Stephen Phillips), whose powerful speech must have been difficult to make. It was a great pleasure, too, to hear the voice of my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol West (Thangam Debbonaire) back in the Chamber this evening.

I shall focus my remarks on amendment 87, proposed in the House of Lords by Lord Alf Dubs. Some 95,000 children and teenagers are alone in Europe as a result of the refugee crisis—four times more than Save the Children thought the figure was for unaccompanied child refugees. This amendment asks Britain to help only 3,000 of them; and that is all. It will not solve the problem, but it will mean we are doing our bit. That is why I think the Government are so wrong to say no. We should do our bit just as we did 70 years ago when Britain supported the Kindertransport that brought Lord Alf Dubs to Britain and saved his life. It had cross-party support at that time. Those survivors of the Kindertransport are asking us to help child refugees again today.

The reason why this amendment is needed is that there are so many children who are disappearing, suffering and dying on our continent today, and other countries do not have the capacity to cope with that alone. This House has the power in its hands to vote for this amendment today.

We should be clear that we all support what the Government have done in providing aid for the region. We all support the 0.7% of GDP that goes in aid, and we also support how much has been done to help the areas affected by the Syrian refugee crisis in particular. We know, too, however, that aid in the regions is not enough, particularly when people are fleeing and need sanctuary, and it is not enough when we need to help children. The lone child and teenage refugees are hugely vulnerable. Thousands are sleeping rough in Europe tonight because there are simply not the places, the sanctuaries and the children’s centres that we need to give them shelter.

[Tom Elliott]

The right hon. Lady makes an important point about the number of refugees and the number of young people who are in Europe. The figure of 26,000 has been mentioned several times. I would be interested to know how the figure of 3,000 came about. Is there an explanation for that, and what criteria will be used to bring the 3,000 children here?

[Yvette Cooper]

The 3,000 figure was proposed by Save the Children, at a time when it thought that 26,000 children in Europe were alone. We now know that the figure is much higher, and that 95,000 children are alone and at risk across Europe. It would be for the Government to work with agencies such as Save the Children to establish the criteria; I think that priority should be given to those with families in Britain who can care for them, but that is something that we can debate.

It is right for us to do our bit to help. Children are sleeping rough tonight because countries across Europe simply do not have the capacity to provide that help. According to UNICEF and Save the Children, 2,000 children are alone in northern Greece, but there are fewer than 500 places for them, and those places are full. In Italy, the agencies found that girls were being exploited by older men, and that half the boys already had sexually transmitted diseases. In Calais, I met 11 and 12-year-olds who were suffering from scabies and bronchitis, and who were sleeping in tents with adult men.

This is the challenge that Europe faces: teenage girls being trafficked into prostitution, teenage boys being abused and raped, children with hypothermia and pneumonia, children who are traumatised because they have lost family along the way, and children who are locked up in detention centres because there are no other places for them to go to—again, often alongside adult men. A Syrian teenager who came to Parliament last week to meet Alf Dubs told me that he had fled the violence and fighting to reach family members who were here in Britain, but the abuse and the suffering that he saw and experienced as a refugee alone in Europe were worse than the violence that he had left behind.

[Andy Slaughter]

As always, my right hon. Friend is speaking passionately. I was at that meeting, and the eyewitness accounts were extremely telling.

Is this not the problem that the Government have tonight? They say that the developed countries of Europe should be able to deal better with refugees, but, as my right hon. Friend has pointed out, those countries are not dealing with it. The fact on the ground, in Calais and in Greece, is that children are at risk and are being brutalised and tormented, in some cases—to their shame—by the authorities who should be looking after them. That, surely, is why we have to do our bit.

[Yvette Cooper]

My hon. Friend is exactly right. Let me make my position clear. I think that other countries should be doing more—I think that it is shocking how little child protection the French authorities have put in place around Calais, and that we need countries across Europe to do far more—but how can we urge them to do more if we are refusing to do anything to help and give sanctuary to those child refugees?

[James Brokenshire]

The right hon. Lady is making an important point about family reunification. Does she accept that the £10 million fund that we are providing through the Department for International Development is intended to help Save the Children and others to support the very thing that I think she is rightly calling for—stronger family reunification, whether in the United Kingdom or in Europe more generally—and that the UK is playing an important part in that respect?

[Yvette Cooper]

The Minister is right to say that we should be supporting family reunion, but, as I said to him in an intervention, that is simply not working in Calais. He and his Department cannot even tell me how many “take charge” requests the Home Office has received. We know that only a dozen of the children from Calais have actually arrived in the first place. [Interruption.] The Minister says that it is 24 now. He has already said that 24 children have been accepted for transfer, but only half of those children have actually arrived in Britain, because the process is simply taking too long.

The Minister is, of course, right to say that we should be trying to assist family reunion from Italy and Greece, but the £10 million that he has announced is funding for charities. It is true that charities can do great work, and they are already doing important work in Calais to help children there. Ultimately, however, it is not enough to ask charities to help if the French and British Governments are refusing to do their bit to speed up the system and provide the legal sanctuary that those children need, and the same applies to the children in Italy and Greece.

Although charities can do great work, they cannot provide the necessary authorities, the legal foster care, the statutory children’s homes, and the statutory child protection. It is Governments who need to do that: the Government in Greece, the Government in Italy, the Government in France, and the Government here in Britain, who should also be doing their bit.

[James Brokenshire]

This is the last time I shall intervene on the right hon. Lady; I do not want to interrupt her flow. On that last point, does she accept that the Government’s offer to put 75 extra people on the ground in Greece, including specialists with the ability to support the Greek Government, demonstrates the fact that the UK Government are playing their role in supporting Greece to do the things that she is calling for?

[Yvette Cooper]

The Minister knows that I have welcomed many of the things that he has announced at every stage. I welcomed the announcement that the Government made in January, for example, just as I welcomed its re-announcement this week. It is sad that, at each stage, they have had to be pressurised into making those announcements, but I welcome them nevertheless. However, the International Rescue Committee and other agencies are saying that the lack of sufficient staff in Greece and Italy means that there are hugely long delays in processing the cases. With regard to the idea that those 75 people are going to make all the difference, that is still not an alternative to Britain doing its bit to provide sanctuary as well.

The UNHCR reports that there have been instances of

“children engaging in survival sex to pay smugglers to continue their journey, either because they have run out money, or because they have been robbed”.

Europol has warned that children, young women and lone refugees are being targeted for exploitation because there is not sufficient protection when they arrive, and that 10,000 child and teenage refugees have disappeared, often into the arms of criminal gangs. This is modern slavery of the kind that the whole House united to condemn just 12 months ago when we passed the new legislation. It is the same modern slavery that the Home Secretary described as being

“an affront to the dignity and humanity of every one of us”.

The House has the chance today to protect the dignity and humanity of 3,000 children and to stop them falling into modern slavery in Europe, so why is the Home Office still refusing to act?

I want to deal with the Minister’s points in turn. First, he says that we are doing our bit by helping children and families in the middle east and north Africa instead. I welcome what we are doing there. As I understand it, the figure of 3,000 will involve children and families, and not simply children alone, because as a result of UNICEF’s advice, the Government have broadened the scope to include children and families. However, this is not an either/or. Just because we are protecting and helping some of those from outside Europe does not mean that we cannot do our bit to help those in Europe as well. Some of the children who are in the detention centres in Greece and the tents in Calais and who are sleeping rough on the streets of Naples now face risks that are greater than those they faced when they were closer to home.

Secondly, the Minister said earlier that this was effectively a matter for the other European countries where the children are right now. The problem is, however, that Italy and Greece are overwhelmed. Germany and Sweden have done much to take in unaccompanied children, but they are struggling to find guardians or places in children’s homes and hostels for more. If we want other countries to do more, we also have to be prepared to do our bit. Of course it is not easy. There would have to be proper support, protection and safeguarding, and robust checks would also be needed. Some of the children and teenagers will have profound and complex needs as a result of the trauma and abuse that they have experienced.

It would also be wrong simply to leave this to Kent to cope with alone. I have had local councils and councillors from right across the country contacting me to say that they want to do more to help. I have heard from organisations such as Home for Good, which represents foster families who want to do more to help, as well as from community groups and faith organisations across the country who think that we should act. We especially have a responsibility to those who have family here. I have raised with the Minister my concerns about the failure to apply the Dublin agreement to Calais and about the number of children who are still stuck in the cold and the mud there; 157 cases have been identified by Citizens UK, yet so few have actually come to Britain. We have been raising that with Ministers over many months.

The Minister pointed out the need to do proper safeguarding checks and assessments and to investigate the families that reside here. He is of course right that safeguarding is necessary, but why is he not thinking about safeguarding them in Calais? They are there right now, in tents, at risk of huge abuse, at risk of gangs, at risk of trafficking, and at risk of taking crazy risks, because that is what teenagers do. Lives have been lost as a result. In January, a 15-year-old was killed in the back of a lorry in Dunkirk. His sister lives in west London. In March, a 17-year-old was killed in the wheel arch of a lorry in Oxfordshire. His uncles lives in Manchester. In April, a seven-year-old nearly suffocated in a lorry in Leicester. That he did not was only because an aid worker in Calais had given him a mobile phone and he was able to send a text message saying that he did not have any oxygen. The aid worker was able to alert the police, and they traced him and his older brother, who would otherwise have suffocated in a lorry. No matter how many times the Minister tells us that it is, the system is not working. He also claims that we are providing support to charities and financial support to the region, but it is not enough. It is not an alternative to Governments acting and providing legal help.

The Minister said that if we take child refugees from Europe, that will encourage more to come, but that argument is deeply wrong. Few of the child refugees in Europe have come because they want to travel to Britain. Many are trying to reach family, which will not change whether or not we take more child refugees. Many are just trying to find somewhere safe anywhere in Europe and that will not change either. Frankly, many do not know where they are going or what they are doing. They may have been trafficked or separated from family along the way.

Action on smugglers, border checks, working with Turkey, a strategy for Libya, or providing alternative safe and legal routes—all of those things may make a difference in preventing people from making a perilous journey in the first place. However, whether Britain takes 3,000 of the 95,000 children who are already in Europe simply will not make a difference to the number who try to come. These children have arrived, they are already here, and they need sanctuary and support. The danger is that the Government are actually saying that it is better to leave them to face those risks and that we should be prepared to abandon thousands of children to a life of exploitation, prostitution and abuse, because that somehow might prevent other children from getting on a boat. That is immoral, because they are children and not only should they have shelter, but they should be in school, where many of them have not been for years. Many of the refugees are a similar age to my children, who are in school and doing exams. It is an age at which children need support and help, not to be turned away.

When the Kindertransport legislation was passed in Parliament, MPs of all parties supported Britain’s leadership in helping child refugees. Alongside Alf Dubs, other Kindertransport survivors, such as Rabbi Harry Jacobi, who came across on one of the last boats out of Amsterdam, and Sir Erich Reich, have spoken out to urge us to do more now. All of them have joined with the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the Church of England, the House of Lords, Save the Children, the Refugee Council, Citizens UK, the Jewish Council for Racial Equality, local government, community groups and faith groups to urge MPs to do the right thing today. We are rightly proud of what the Kindertransport did and of the cross-party support in Parliament, but will today’s vote on child refugees be a similar source of pride for future generations or a source of shame?

We rightly commemorate the Kindertransport and the life of Sir Nicholas Winton, who rescued hundreds of Jewish child refugees. His picture is now on the Royal Mail’s first-class stamp. When it was launched, the Home Secretary called him

“an enduring example of the difference that good people can make even in the darkest of times.”

She called him a hero of the 20th century. He was. We need heroes for the 21st century, too. It is no good just congratulating ourselves on Britain’s past if we are not prepared to show the same support and sanctuary today. It is no good telling children the parable of the goodand be disappointed about how we voted today. Let us all, from all parts of this House, stand together and support the Dubs amendment.

[Several hon. Members rose—]