Zarah Sultana
Main Page: Zarah Sultana (Labour - Coventry South)Department Debates - View all Zarah Sultana's debates with the Home Office
(2 years, 11 months ago)
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Zarah Sultana (Coventry South) (Lab) [V]
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Neil Coyle) on securing this important debate.
The poet Warsan Shire wrote:
“you have to understand,
that no one puts their children in a boat
unless the water is safer than the land”.
When the Government and much of the media cover channel crossings or the supposed migrant crisis, there is rarely an attempt to understand that. The stories of the people themselves are ignored. It is not said, for example, that many people seeking asylum in the UK had homes destroyed by British bombs and British wars. It is not said that when fleeing poverty and persecution in their homelands, people are desperate to be reunited with loved ones already here in Britain. No, in the eyes of the Government and much of the right-wing press, they are not people; they are a problem. That is how the asylum system treats them.
As hon. Members have said, those people have been crammed into camps in Penally and Napier and forced to share dormitories with dozens, predictably causing mass outbreaks of coronavirus. When I challenged the Home Secretary about that at the end of January, she promised me that the camps were of a very strong standard. We now know that that is not true. Instead, they were against public health guidance and recommendations from the local health boards.
It is not just the camps. During the pandemic, an unprecedented number of people seeking asylum have been left in unsuitable and often unsafe accommodation. In Coventry, I have seen at first hand the appalling conditions and disgraceful treatment people are subjected to. Mothers with young babies moved into rooms with insect infestations and mould covering the walls. Parents separated from each other with no reason and no warning. All the while, the outsourcing companies that run the services, such as Serco, make huge profits from Government contracts.
The people seeking asylum are denied the right to work, and local authorities, even if they are eager to help, are starved of necessary funding. In Coventry, we are lucky to have organisations such as Coventry Asylum and Refugee Action Group and Carriers of Hope, which provide meals and essential items for people seeking asylum. I want to pay particular tribute to Loraine Mponela and Sue Sampson for the incredible work they do in Coventry.
No one’s basic needs should depend on charity. People seeking asylum are not a problem to be managed or a useful scapegoat to distract and divide. They are people deserving of dignity and respect. Napier barracks must close immediately, there must be funding for local authorities and the dispersal scheme, with the housing stock invested in and upgraded, and those seeking sanctuary should be offered the opportunity to rebuild their lives with an end to the ban on the right to work.