Thank you to the constituents who have contacted me
about their concerns over child refugees and the Withdrawal Agreement Bill.
I fully understand how important and emotive an
issue like child refugees is to many, and I welcome the Government’s
confirmation that its policy on child refugees has not changed and that it will
continue to do all it can to enable children to claim asylum and be reunited
with their families. It is in both the UK and the EU’s interest to continue
cooperation on asylum matters after Brexit.
In response to a Labour MP’s questioning on this
matter during the Second Reading of the Withdrawal Agreement Bill, the Prime
Minister said in the House Commons:
“We remain absolutely committed to ensuring that
this country will continue to receive unaccompanied children. We have led
Europe and received thousands already—this country has a proud record—and we
will continue to do so.”
The UK has made a significant contribution to
protecting vulnerable children, providing protection to more than 39,500
children since the start of 2010. In 2018, the UK received the third highest
number of asylum claims from unaccompanied children in the EU.
The Government remain fully committed to relocating
480 children under section 67 (also known as the Dubs Amendment) and are
continuing to make progress to achieve that objective.
Answering another MP’s questioning, he added:
“We remain proud of our work in receiving
unaccompanied children. We will continue to support fully the purpose and
spirit of the Dubs amendment, but this is not the place—in this Bill—to do so.
The Government remain absolutely committed to doing so.”
In Boris Johnson I see a Prime Minister who will be
more liberal, open and compassionate when it comes to immigration, asylum and
refugees matters, than many previous Conservative Prime Ministers.
I also agree with him that the Withdrawal Agreement
Bill is not the right place to debate family reunification of child refugees or
asylum seekers. The Bill is narrow in scope – it is fundamentally about
facilitating as smooth and effective a Brexit as possible.
I voted against the amendments on child refugees
not because I am against the resettlement or family reunification of child
refugees, but because I believe that it would be wrong to bind the Government’s
hands in any way as it seeks to negotiate an effective Brexit.
There will be many future opportunities to discuss
the very important issue of child refugees, such as the various stages of the
Immigration and Social Security Bill, and to build on the work that our country
has already done to help refugees and refugee children.
Since 2016, Britain has resettled more refugees
from outside Europe than any other EU state and we will continue to do all we
can to help the world’s most vulnerable.
The newly announced Global Refugee Resettlement
Scheme, which builds on the incredible achievement of resettling over 20,000
vulnerable refugees through the Syrian Vulnerable Persons Resettlement
Scheme(VPRS) and Vulnerable Children’s Resettlement Scheme (VCRS), will help
thousands more people fleeing conflict and persecution, including children, to
build a new life in the UK.
It might be of interest to constituents that in the
previous Parliament, I sat on the Bill Committee for Angus MacNeil MP’s (SNP)
Private Member’s Bill on Family Reunion of Refugees and had meetings with
groups like the British Red Cross and the UNHCR to understand the need for
vulnerable refugees around the world to be reunited with their family members
in the UK. In the past two years I have also been working with a cross-party
group of MPs including Tim Farron MP (Liberal Democrats) and Kate Green MP
(Labour) on various immigration, asylum and refugees issues, through my
participation on the All Party Parliamentary Group on Migration and on the RAMP
Project.
The UK has a proud history of welcoming and
supporting those who are most in need of protection. I will continue to engage
with the issue of children refugees and work with MPs from other parties to
make sure that we are giving safe sanctuary and pathway to family reunification
for refugees, while restoring the public’s trust in our asylum and refugee
system by ensuring that it is done in a fair and managed manner.
