I am grateful for the opportunity to speak. I will do so perhaps rather more briefly and concisely than many others have done, because I know that lots of people want to contribute to this debate.
Up to now, I have sought not to encumber the House and the Government with lots of amendments to an already extensive and comprehensive Bill. I have certainly sought not to bind the Government’s hands in the very difficult process of exiting the EU in the months and years to come—particularly in the complex and important negotiations, which received a substantial boost last Friday. No hon. Member should be in any doubt that there is a serious and growing prospect of our agreeing to a mutually beneficial conclusion to the Brexit negotiations. Why would anybody in this House not want that to happen?
There is, however, an aspect of the Bill that merits a new clause. I am speaking primarily to new clause 53, which is in my name and that of other right hon. and hon. Members from all parts of the House. The new clause is designed simply to perpetuate an existing
arrangement in family reunion rules. We should take great pride in our involvement in that arrangement. Many of us are concerned that if it does not continue, vulnerable children who are fleeing conflict in the middle east, in particular—this House has heard much about them in the last few years, and is familiar with the situation—could be detained in places of danger. We are doing much to help such children, and we need to do more.
I have seen at first hand the benefits of the Dublin arrangements. My right hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan) and I went to Athens as the guests of UNICEF earlier in the year to visit the refugee projects. I am aware that many other hon. Members have been to Greece, Italy and Calais to see the results of getting it wrong further up the line. The situation in Italy, in particular, is rather more extreme than that in Greece. In Greece, we saw UNICEF and other aid agencies working with a Government under great pressure, and doing a pretty impressive job. Some 30,000 refugees arrived in Greece in 2016, but the number of arrivals has since fallen to a more manageable level. That—not least the almost 3,000 unaccompanied children among those 30,000 refugees—still represents a serious challenge, however.
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I pay tribute to the aid agencies for working within the existing rules in very difficult circumstances and doing their very best. They have been helped, quite rightly, by a lot of aid money from this country, and any doubters of the benefit of our aid budget should go and see at first hand what we are achieving. We were particularly impressed by the work of the British Council, which brings together unaccompanied child refugees from a number of different backgrounds, languages, cultures and countries and gives them a meaningful education. That gives them the hope and aspiration that they will be able to carry on a normal life at some stage.
With winter upon us, the situation in Greece is far from satisfactory. There are almost 2,000 unaccompanied children on waiting lists just for accommodation shelters in Greece. The conditions on the islands, where many who have come across the Aegean end up, are far from satisfactory, and it still takes far too long to get those children to places of safety, permanence and some degree of stability. That is why my right hon. Friend and I have tabled this new clause, which I am glad to see has been supported by many other hon. Members.
My right hon. Friend and I disagree on much about the process of Brexit, although I hope that the number of things on which we disagree is reducing as she sees the inevitability of what will happen. On the subject of family reunion rules, however, we are absolutely at one. We saw at first hand orphaned children and unaccompanied children trying to reach relatives in countries across the EU. Some children had been sent there from Syria to escape the bombs raining down on places such as Aleppo. Some had been sent there to escape conscription into the Syrian army and an ensuing murky existence.
Under current EU law, an unaccompanied child can apply to be reunited with his or her close family in any other state that is a signatory to the Dublin convention—currently the Dublin III regulations; it will transform into Dublin IV at some stage in the future—but there is
a disparity between the UK’s refugee family reunion rules and the Dublin III regulations. The UK’s own rules enable refugee children to be reunited only with their parents, whereas Dublin III allows unaccompanied asylum-seeking children to be reunited with their adult siblings, grandparents, aunts and uncles, as well as their parents. That discrepancy has left many children with little choice but to make the dangerous journey to Europe to reach safety with family in the UK.
We met many articulate, well-educated teenagers, some of whom had lost their parents and were looking to go to other countries in Europe—primarily Sweden and Germany—where they had the last vestiges of family connection. Quite often, those connections were with siblings, or uncles and aunts. For those young people, it was the only available bit of stability and continuity with their previous existence in places such as Syria.