Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2020-11-04
Topic: Immigration
Yvette Cooper (Labour, Centre-left): This Lords amendment should not be a point of party political disagreement. I agree with every word that the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) said. He is a fellow member of the Home Affairs Committee, and the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald) is also a member of the Select Committee. We may disagree on many things, but on this we are in strong agreement, as we are with my hon. Friend the Member for Halifax (Holly Lynch) When in the past we have helped child refugees, we have done so on a cross-party basis—be it, generations ago, with the Kindertransport or, in more recent years, with the Dubs amendment put forward by Lord Dubs, himself a child of the Kindertransport. We have done so with the investment through the aid budget supporting refugees across the regions, and with the resettlement scheme, which many of us called for and the Government rightly brought forward, to help many Syrian families restart their lives. The same principle should apply here as well We have always had cross-party agreement that we should do our bit to help children and teenagers who are alone with no one to look after them, and who have fled conflict and persecution but have family here in the UK who can care for them, put a roof over their head, try to make sure they get back into school, look after them and give them back a future. It is something that every one of us would want for our own families if we, for a moment, just think about walking in others’ shoes and about the awful plight of families in this situation, torn asunder by conflict or by persecution. I have teenage and adult children and, like so many of us, I would want them to be back together or to find others who could care for them from within our family if something terrible happened While the Government’s proposed review will, I hope, be important in looking at safe and legal routes to sanctuary, it is not an alternative to the Lords amendment. Reviews take time and consultation takes time. All of those things take time, and we do not know yet where it will end, but at the moment the rules change in January, and therefore it is not an alternative for the children and teenage refugees who may be in need of support to rejoin family now The hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham set out clearly why the current rules do not suffice to provide that support, but Safe Passage provided us with the reason why there is so much at stake when it described the case of a 14-year-old teenage boy on the streets of Paris, whose brother is here. Safe Passage had worked with him to get him off the streets into secure accommodation, to get him support from social services and to get him into the legal process to apply to rejoin his adult brother, who is in Scotland. However, the boy and his brother became deeply anxious that the rules were about to change at the end of December, and he has now left that accommodation. He has absconded, and nobody knows where he is. The message he left behind said, "I have heard that the law will change. What will happen to me?" The huge risk is that he may now end up in the arms of people smugglers or people traffickers, trying to make a really dangerous journey. We have seen the consequences of those awful, dangerous journeys in flimsy boats, with lives having been lost so recently—children’s lives have been lost as well I urge the Minister to think again and go with the spirit of the things he told us this morning about wanting to be compassionate towards child and teenage refugees. I urge him to keep these provisions in place, to accept the Lords amendment and to recognise our continuing obligation to reunite desperate families. If he wants to look at this again once his review is in place, he will have done no further harm to those families in the meantime For the sake of these teenagers and young people, whose safety and lives may otherwise be at risk, I urge the Minister to accept the Lords amendment.