Refugees (Family Reunion) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2022-07-08
Topic: Immigration
Sarah Ludford (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, the Minister was not wrong in that last remark. I thank him very much for his reply, which I will come back to, but I want to thank everybody who has spoken in this debate. I was extremely pleased that we had the bonus of two extremely valuable extra speakers in the gap, which was wonderful The noble Baroness, Lady Neuberger, made a salutary correction to our historical perspective on the story of the Kindertransport. It was, of course, incomplete and she is right to focus our attention on the sadness and despair—I must get her note on the name of that book, though it will be in Hansard, obviously. I found what she said about the sense of abandonment very moving; how can children prosper in such circumstances? I was pleased that the Minister also picked up on that point. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham also raised the question of the trauma for the child in expecting them to grow up without their parents and quoted very moving testimony from Afghanistan. The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, asked a pertinent question: do the Government want to be world leading in cruelty to child refugees? It is a fair question. She talked about not only having no one to embrace us, as refugees, in our sadness, but also having no one to share our successes with. I thought that was a very good point; it is not just about comfort but about celebration when we do well I am glad the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, reminded me; I second his thanks to the Library for its briefing note. Like everyone else across this House, I just think Alf, the noble Lord, is brilliant. I am pleased to serve with him on the Joint Committee on Human Rights. His efforts since 2017 especially, trying to keep the Dubs scheme going in the face of a disappointing response from the Government is nothing short of heroic The noble Baroness, Lady Wheatcroft, rightly reminded us of how the pandemic has highlighted our appreciation of family. Not to get noble Lords weeping for me, but I spent Christmas Day 2020 alone as a widow; I was supposed to go to a family Christmas but, because of lockdown, I could not. It was not that bad—I had loads of chocolate and silly TV and in my neck of the woods at least three shops are open on Christmas Day. I am not asking people to feel sorry for me but Christmas, if you celebrate it, is not normally a time when you like to be alone in this country; perhaps it brought home to me that sense of being alone My noble friend Lord Paddick talked about putting some heart back into immigration policy in this country. That is what this whole debate and the Bill are about. He reminded us of what a small fraction of total immigration family reunion—indeed, safe and legal routes generally—is. We are really not talking about some large extra cohort I very much welcome the support of the Labour Front Bench, expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy of Southwark. He made the very correct point that we get loads of new legislation. Like him, one loses track of all the immigration and asylum Bills, but what is lacking is any real action on tackling the criminal gangs, for which we certainly need co-operation with France and Europol. Of course, one of the great holes in the trade and co-operation agreement with the EU was any co-operation on security and justice issues, which is absurd given the history of how the UK championed a lot of the co-operation. We had the director of Europol for 10 years, for goodness’ sake, and now we have made ourselves absent. We need to put the criminal gangs out of business, and the way to do that is through safe and legal routes, of which this Bill is one That brings me to the response of the Minister, which was not dissimilar to the response I had last September. He tells us that the Government fully support the principle of family unity which is why they have a comprehensive policy. He tried to reassure us of the width and generosity of this policy, but he will forgive me if I am not terribly persuaded of that. The Minister talked about this Bill encompassing an extended family, but it does not really; it is quite nuclear, apart from adult dependent children. It is not nearly as wide, as my noble friend Lord Paddick pointed out, as the Ukraine family scheme. The Minister’s response to why that scheme is about extended family was to say that it is Putin’s war.