European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-12
Topic: Immigration
Timothy Paul Loughton (Conservative, Centre-right): I am not alarmed by the fact that the hon. Lady has signed my new clause 53; I am flattered and encouraged. I would expect nothing else from the hon. Lady, who has taken an interest in this area. However, Calais is a sign of failure: it should not be happening. We should be dealing with those children closer to home, or leapfrogging Calais altogether and placing them in places of safety in the United Kingdom, Sweden or France itself. The issue is baffling to me—I have spoken about it many times. If what is happening in Calais was happening in the United Kingdom, our children’s services would be placing those children in a place of safety, not allowing them to remain at liberty and be exposed to people traffickers, sex traffickers and all sorts of other criminals who would harm them I want to get back to what my new clause attempts to do. As we leave the European Union and therefore Dublin III, the UK’s different—in this case, slightly more restrictive—immigration rules will provide the only means by which refugee children can be legally reunited with their families. As the UK looks to improve our own laws through the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill and to replicate the provisions ensuring that children stranded in Europe can be brought to join asylum-seeking family members in the UK, it is imperative that it should broaden the scope of the definition of "family" in our own British immigration rules so that these are in line with the current European ones. That will allow children to be reunited with close family members, wherever they are. Hence the importance of continuity and of perpetuating the existing situation, which works well; it could work better, but the principle is certainly absolutely right The UK’s immigration rules can apply to children anywhere in the world, and they therefore provide a safe and legal route for children, avoiding the need for them to embark on perilous journeys to Europe, which have been discussed. We need to build on this very positive aspect of the rules. The UK should amend its immigration rules on refugee family reunion to allow extended family members who have refugee or humanitarian status—adult siblings, grandparents, aunts and uncles, as I have mentioned—to sponsor children in their family to join them in the UK when it is in the child’s best interests to do so. That point about the child’s best interests must be absolutely paramount, as it is the basis of all our child welfare legislation in this country. After years of conflict, many of these children have been orphaned or do not know where their parents are, but they may have grandparents, aunts and uncles, or adult brothers and sisters in the UK, who can care for them If these changes were made to the UK immigration rules, that would enable children to be transferred from their region of origin and reunited in a regular, managed and safe way. Refugee family reunion transfers would all be processed by UK embassies or consulates, meaning that we could take back control of this process and ensure it works at a speed—it needs to be quicker than it is now—that is in the best interests of the children Without the changes, children will continue to be vulnerable in being forced to take dangerous journeys and put themselves at risk. The whole thrust of our asylum policy on looking after these vulnerable children has been to keep them away from such harm. Last year, some 700 unaccompanied refugee children were united with their families using the European system, which is on top of all the other schemes to which the UK currently subscribes I hope that my new clause is a helpful probing amendment. I am grateful to the Minister for Immigration, who has met my right hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough and me to discuss this issue. He is sympathetic to what we are trying to achieve. I acknowledge that the timing of the new clause might be better in a forthcoming immigration Bill, but it is useful to put it on the record now to get a comment from Ministers about the Government’s intentions at the appropriate time and perhaps with more appropriate wording; the word "appropriate" continues to appear My new clause is intended to build on the good work that the UK Government have done for so many thousands of child refugees so far. That good work has resulted from the huge investment—now of over £2.3 billion on Syrian refugees alone—aimed at frustrating the people traffickers and others who would harm these very vulnerable children. Such a change would show that the United Kingdom intends to continue, after Brexit, to be a leading force for humanitarian good outside the EU on the basis of British principles, British attitudes to the welfare of the child and British generosity in looking after, as we have done for so many years, those most in need. This system works, and we must make sure that it continues to work after Brexit.