Nationality and Borders Bill — House of Lords, 2022-02-10
Topic: International Affairs
David Alton (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I intervene briefly to support Amendment 193A in the name of my noble friend Lady D’Souza, the remarks made by the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, and particularly those made just now by the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Newnham. She will not mind me saying so, but hers was the speech of the debate we had recently in the Moses Room, where we were discussing the International Relations and Defence Select Committee report on Afghanistan. The noble Baroness, Lady Smith, and I served on that committee. We both made some of the points which have made again today about resettlement and the need to reach out One of the other extraordinary speeches in that debate, if the Minister has not had a chance to read it, concerned what the noble Baroness just said about the importance of interdepartmental dialogue and discussion, which was represented in a way during that debate because we had the Foreign Office—the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon, replied—as well as the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, of the Ministry of Defence, who has been engaged with this issue too. That is a really important point about the need for joined-up government and it is an excellent report, which I commend to the Minister Returning to a couple of questions that were asked directly of the Minister during the debate, the British Council was raised; I think, in parenthesis, my noble friend Lord Kerr also referenced the BBC World Service. Only yesterday I wrote to the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon, copying in the Minister, about the situation of 60 Afghan journalists who worked for the BBC in Kabul. It is to the credit of the British Government that they are now here in London. However, the point I made was that as a result of the reduction in our aid programme, in cutting from 0.7% to 0.5%, the BBC is not now in a position to offer contracts to those 60 and it looks as though only 26 will be employed That brings me to my next question, about integration. Some of those who have arrived here from Afghanistan have been put in pretty grim accommodation. The Minister may recall that I wrote to her about one of the hotels in which some were based here in London. Some have now been relocated to where I live, Lancashire. The conditions in one of the houses that I had described to me recently were pretty awful. Even worse, the father of the family, who was a major in the Afghan army, and whose life would obviously be at great risk from the Taliban, is unable to get a job at the moment. This comes back to the right-to-work discussions that we had earlier in the proceedings on the Bill. What can we do to help people in that position The Minister will recall that earlier in our proceedings I raised the issue of language. My wife, in "retirement", as a speech and language therapist, does two days a week as a volunteer in Lancashire, teaching English to people who have arrived as refugees and asylum seekers. They now include some of the Afghan arrivals. I will not go into the tragic details of some of those whom she has been working with or some of the trauma that has been experienced by the children of some of those families, but I urge the Minister to build on the intervention that was made by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham last week about the importance of English as a second language. If we do not provide the opportunity of learning English, opportunities for employment and integration will be minimal indeed This amendment is good. No doubt it can be improved between now and Report. Perhaps more can be done to ensure the successful resettlement of those who have already reached here, and we will not leave it to people such as the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, to hire private aeroplanes and persuade businessmen in Britain, generous as they have been. She specifically mentioned Sir Michael Hintze, who paid for a plane to come from Kabul full of people who had been lawyers, judges, journalists, human rights defenders—people at risk. It should not be left to private citizens to do that. I know the Minister sufficiently well to know that she would share that view. Therefore, I hope that we can build on this amendment to some extent.