Refugees (Family Reunion) Bill [HL]

Baroness Hamwee Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 18th October 2024 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Hamwee]

That the Bill be now read a second time.

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, perhaps I should start my speech with, “As I was saying,” given that this is the fifth such Private Member’s Bill from these Benches since 2017. My noble friend Lady Ludford introduced numbers 3 and 4.

I declare an interest as a trustee of a trust established by the noble Baroness, Lady Neuberger, which has introduced me to a number of young asylum seekers applying for funding to attend university. Like so many young refugees I have met, they have impressed me by their resilience and their determination to contribute to the UK.

The first purpose of the Bill is to provide in primary legislation, not just in amendable rules that can be changed without Parliament’s involvement or scrutiny, the rights of people who seek safety in the UK to be joined by their family. It is not enough to hope that the Home Office will use its discretion. The second purpose is to define “family”. It is an unambitiously narrow definition, in the hope that the Government will see this extension to enable children to sponsor immediate family to join them as modest and doable—she says looking straight at the Minister. The right to sponsor applies to people with protection status—that is, refugees—and those with humanitarian protection who are at real risk of harm if returned to their country of origin but not for the specific reasons which bring them within the refugee convention. I shall refer to them all as refugees. The third purpose is legal aid.

Since 2017, when the first Bill was introduced, the plight of refugees has not changed, nor have the UK’s moral obligations or the importance of family, which politicians continue to emphasise. However, the political context has not stayed still: the areas affected—afflicted —by conflict; the greater politicisation of immigration; the conflation of asylum and immigration; and small boats have succeeded the lorries and trains used by desperate asylum seekers. Last year, 7% of asylum claims were from unaccompanied children. The academic think tank UK in a Changing Europe reports that 33% of the public think that the figure is not 7% but 40% or more. There is a huge leadership role for government to be clear here.

This Bill sits squarely within calls for safe routes for refugees; I acknowledge that we have some, mostly very specific. I acknowledge that, under the new Government, families separated during the evacuation from Kabul airport will benefit from an expansion of the ACRS and that a child evacuated without his parents will be able to make a referral to relocate them or—GOV.UK says “or”—his siblings. But there is so much more to do to put safe routes in place.

Today is Anti-Slavery Day. We know the dangers of being in the hands of traffickers—a very real risk for children alone—and of extreme exploitation. The organisation Missing People is clear that being missing very often means harm. I hope the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, with her experience, will expand on this. Her report seven years ago found that closing off safe routes feeds the trafficking and smuggling networks.

Last year the Justice and Home Affairs Committee of your Lordships’ House, which I had the privilege of chairing, published a report on family migration. We were all affected by the evidence about children seeking asylum. A young Eritrean reached the UK alone after the sort of journey that is hard to imagine. His brother made it to Libya, which is not a good place to find yourself; he was picked up by traffickers. His sister was picked up at the border of Egypt and imprisoned there for two years. That committee is one of a number—in the Commons too—to have called for an extension to family reunification.

The Government’s response was:

“Our policy is not designed to keep child refugees away from their parents, but in considering any policy we must think carefully about the wider impact to avoid putting more people unnecessarily into harm’s way”.


Well, they are in harm’s way at home. There are plenty of “push factors”, but that Government often deployed the “pull factor” argument. As the noble Lord, Lord Kerr of Kinlochard, has said, it is “inherently implausible”. That Government’s attempts at deterrence in other contexts were not notably successful. We cannot prove a negative, but various respected organisations have reported that they cannot find support for the contention. It does not seem to me a compelling argument; indeed, there is evidence of children not wanting the Red Cross to trace their family in their country of origin for fear of endangering them.

What is compelling is the importance of family. They may not always be perfect, but being separated from your parents in childhood tends to have a significant impact on your mental health and well-being, indeed your very development. I know that other noble Lords will refer to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, as well as the European Convention on Human Rights. Siblings, too, are hugely significant; what a difference it must make in a strange country if you are with your brother or sister.

Our rules reflect a very westernised view of family. In many cultures, it is common for children of both sexes to live with their parents until marriage, and for three or four generations to stay together as a unit. Dependants are not as limited a cohort as we think of them. I have been urged to add more relatives to the list, and I well understand that; my own aunts were hugely important to me. I have said that the Bill is deliberately unambitious but, under it, the Secretary of State could add to the categories: criteria would include risk to physical, emotional or psychological well-being, and the interests of the child. I have heard the term “unexpressed grief” in connection with mental health, and “the freedom to be a child”.

There are benefits to society of supporting the integration of refugees. A moment’s thought will confirm what being settled means, in the non-technical sense, for refugees and for the rest of the population. It means stability; you can focus and achieve. If you are a child, you can focus on your education rather than being one of those described as “challenging” because you are always on edge, hoping your mother might be able to phone you.

Would there be a cost to the UK? Common sense tells me the contrary. Parents can take care of their children. We all know of the costs to local authorities of looking after children they are required to accommodate and support.

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

Will the noble Baroness give way?

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

I am time limited, like others, but I give way.

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

Perhaps the noble Baroness could inform the House how many people she envisages, on an annual basis, would be granted refugee family reunion status under these measures.

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

I will not go into that now; I do not have it in my speech. I am time limited and conscious of other people’s need for that time. I will happily tell the noble Lord later. From the tone of that question, he obviously opposes what I am saying. I will go into that with him later, but he does not have his name down to speak.

In 2018 the UK Government requested information from EU member states about the impact of their family reunion policies. The UK is quite an outlier in Europe. There was little assessment about public services or the costs to Governments, but Italy reported that it had seen no financial effect on public resources. If the noble Lord who has just intervened is worried about numbers, he might think about costs, which are another factor. I can tell the noble Lord that the Refugee Council and Safe Passage estimate an additional 240 to 750 visa grants—not sponsorships—a year.

I turn lastly to legal aid. Yes, of course, there is a shortage of lawyers, but family reunion needs to be in scope. Exceptional case funding is so exceptional as to be well-nigh invisible. The current rules are a maze, almost impenetrable to applicants and to many lawyers.

I urge noble Lords to see this Bill all the way through, and the Government to accept what it provides. At the last iteration, the Labour Front Bench was very supportive. I will not name the spokesman for fear of embarrassing him, but he was very senior.

I have received a lot of support from outside the House. The International Rescue Committee says that it

“welcomes and strongly endorses this Bill which would see children and young people, who have fled conflict and persecution, finally reunited with their loved ones in the UK”.

In 2020, 14 children from a London primary school who had read the book The Boy at the Back of the Class—I commend it to noble Lords—told me how sad they were about the plight of lone refugee children. The boy at the back of the class was an unaccompanied asylum seeker. They were happy, though, that the book had a happy ending. In fact, the fiction involved the intervention of the late Queen Elizabeth. One child wrote:

“It must be very scary … to be in a big new country surrounded by new people. A strong country like ours can help”.


I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, I am grateful to noble Lords who have spoken in support of the Bill. I know that, for at least two, being here was not straightforward. I also put on record the support that I have been asked to mention by four who have had to be elsewhere—the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, and the noble Lords, Lord Dubs, Lord Kerr of Kinlochard and Lord Purvis of Tweed.

I thank the organisations that have briefed Peers for this debate and the individuals in them for all their work in the sector. I know how pressed they are. I will not name them all, other than to thank the Refugee Council—Jon Featonby has helped me so much to get this Bill and its predecessors to Second Reading.

I am sorry that, over the years, the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe, and I have been put into oppositional positions, as it were. It is not something that I wish at a personal level. He said that the system is not as dysfunctional as it has been painted, but I think that it is dysfunctional for the children whom we have been talking about.

The noble Lord also talked about playing into the hands of smugglers. It is widely regarded that establishing safe routes is the best way to address smuggling. I and the whole House look forward to a policy from the new Government on this. The Minister referred to a change of tone; I look forward to a change of policy and a change of law. The Government accept the importance of family reunion, but it is more than children joining their parents. It is illogical that it does not apply the other way round.

The term “exceptional” is prayed in aid, in respect of both legal aid and how the rules can be disapplied. I think that this separation should always be regarded as exceptional; it is the separation that is exceptional. I hope that there may be an opportunity to reflect with the Government, not against them. I anticipated a number of the objections that were made but, on resource pressures, several noble Lords made it clear that those pressures are best reduced by simplifying the rules and procedures. My noble friend Lord Oates referred to the processes; if they were smoother, that would save everyone an awful lot.

I am not going to take the time to refer to all the points that have been made but I realised that, since I have to wear spectacles, I could not see that I had rather more time left at the beginning. So I will take a moment to share with the House the responses that I received from the Migration Observatory, which I contacted to ask about numbers in preparation for this debate. It said that, as so many factors influence asylum migration, isolating the impact of family and reunion rights on asylum flows would be difficult statistically. However, it gave me two examples that it thought were instructive.

In 2016, Ireland changed domestic policy to enable children to sponsor family members and saw no significant change in numbers of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children in the two years following the change. Very properly, the Migration Observatory said that one could always argue that, absent the change, numbers would have been smaller, but this is again impossible to verify statistically.

The example of Norway, which has family reunion for these children, suggests that a small share sponsor family members to join them—just 12% from 1990 to 2015. The Migration Observatory also refers to a report by the Refugee Council and Safe Passage, which said that this small percentage is supported by anecdotal evidence from service providers in the UK, which say that separated children are often unable to locate their family members. This makes sponsoring them very difficult. I beg to move.

Bill read a second time and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

Refugees (Family Reunion) Bill [HL]

Baroness Hamwee Excerpts

Committee stage
Friday 17th January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

Bruiser? Moi? Surely not. I will at some point potentially bruise the noble Lord once again, but today I am trying to find the sensible middle way.

Let me say to the noble Lord, Lord Murray, that I have already recognised that there are issues with the numbers. When he intervened at Second Reading and asked the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, about the numbers, there was a potential vacuum for an assessment of what those numbers would be. Again, any sensible Government would have to take those matters into account, which, to answer the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, is why I indicated at Second Reading that we had concerns about the additional numbers, the assessments of those numbers and the criteria for granting them. As I said then and reiterate today, there are legal reasonable routes for other family members to join after a proper assessment. Without repeating it all today, I referenced that very strongly in the debate at Second Reading.

The government response today is that I wish the amendments to be withdrawn. But that is a matter for noble Lords. As we progress, in Committee, on Report, at Third Reading and when the Bill goes to the House of Commons, we as a Government will, in between, reflect on these matters.

I hope that is clear, even if it is slightly in the middle. Maybe in the middle is not such a bad place to be. That is my view on the amendments and on the Bill. I can add nothing more than that today than to allow the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, to respond to amendments that were designed—as appears to be the condition of current Opposition Members—not to help clarity, were perhaps for a little further discussion or perhaps a little obfuscation. Ultimately, the House will determine these matters in due course.

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as a trustee of the Schwab and Westheimer Trust, which supports young asylum seekers in education. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, for his compliments about persistence. The compliments should be directed at previous Home Office Ministers, who waived the Bill’s predecessors through to the Commons in a very similar form and did not seek to obstruct them. I applaud the Minister’s elegant negotiation of a tightrope. As he says, there can be further opportunities for discussion, and of course sending the Bill to the Commons gives those opportunities.

I apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Murray. I certainly had not intended a discourtesy. There was not a vacuum as regards the numbers; it was my inability immediately to find the briefing we received from the Red Cross, Safe Passage and the Refugee Council, which was sent to those who had their names down to speak at Second Reading. Had I realised that he wanted to pursue that point, I would of course have handed on my copy of the briefing. That briefing included a number of other issues.

I will make a few general points that are relevant to all the amendments in this group. The Bill is to put into statutory form provisions for family reunion that are currently in the rules, because statute is more stable than rules. We are adding siblings, for reasons that we will come to, and provide for children to sponsor family members, including parents, whom they cannot currently sponsor. The cost of supporting unaccompanied children is obviously high. My view is that reuniting families would lead to savings: parents would support their children.

We want to see more safe and legal routes. Currently, those routes are quite limited. The provisions we are proposing would create a safe and legal route, subject to a visa. Applications for visas are much easier to control, oversee and assess than people arriving on our shores in an irregular fashion. Of course, children—particularly those who are alone—are in a particular position. That is why we have had a lot of support from outside the House, with many mentions of the best interests of the child. Vulnerability to trafficking and exploitation has already been mentioned.

The incompatibility of some of the amendments with many of the current rules has been mentioned. The current position is that the Secretary of State can extend or restrict eligibility through changes to the rules, so the factual position remains the same. Amendment 19 is slightly tighter than the current position, in that it suggests criteria.

I will have to keep my remarks shorter than I would like, and I hope noble Lords will understand the slightly telegraphic nature of some of what I have to say. First, making the Bill not permissive denies the whole Bill. I thought the “may” and “must” point was linked with the proviso in Amendment 5, which I had assumed was the main point. The noble Lord, Lord Murray, shows concern for services integration, which was not much of a focus for the previous Government. It is hugely important, and I encourage him to keep on urging both investment and support for the organisations involved, and to pursue the recommendations of the Woolf commission. But the conditions he sets out do not apply to grants of family reunion now.

We on these Benches are no great fans of the IMA; I hope that we will see the current Government get rid of it. The previous Government of the noble Lord, Lord Murray, consulted on a cap under the IMA, but did not include family reunion in the proposals for that cap. They listed routes to be subject to the cap and referred to other safe and legal routes.