Last week, Swansea celebrated 10 years as a city of sanctuary. We offer a hand of friendship, not a fist of resistance; we are a community of communities, moving forward together in an uncertain world. But the Bill is not a helping hand for those fleeing war and persecution, nor is it a worthy successor to the 1951 refugee convention that Britain helped to produce. Instead, it is a mean-spirited act of national populism to provide more hostile environment for those in genuine need when we have savagely cut overseas aid by £4.4 billion, which will increase refugee demand.
Last year, we had 27,000 asylum seekers in Britain—the 17th highest number in Europe per head of population and the fifth highest overall—so there is not a massive problem of refugees and asylum seekers. That debate has been whipped up as a cynical political exaggeration. Millions of people have been displaced from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq, where we have been engaged in war, and we need to take our responsibility in due accord.
The 1951 refugee convention recognised that in fleeing from war and persecution, people arrive irregularly, obviously—they are escaping. The Bill reduces the rights of people who arrive irregularly by boat or lorry, which is a natural way to escape. The plan is to put them into temporary isolated camps so that they do not settle, which will be a magnet for protesters, fascists and the like. They need rehabilitation and settling, not isolation and persecution. People who are not travelling directly or who are delaying will get second-class treatment as so-called group 2 refugees, so they will have to wait 30 months at a time. They will have to wait 10 years before they have any sort of permanency.
What is more, the Bill criminalises people. People could face up to four years in prison if they do not arrive in a regular way, as no one would who was escaping war or persecution. What we should be doing, like the United States—at last—and like Canada and Norway is increasing the number of refugees settled. Ours went down from 5,000 to 3,000, but it should be nearer to 10,000.
The cut in overseas aid will hit people in Yemen, Afghanistan and Syria the hardest and will produce even more problems, but all we can do is create a hostile environment. We are better than this.
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