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Baroness D'Souza: My Lords, this is a very timely debate and I thank the noble Lord, Lord Waddington, for introducing it. I say timely because the Government have set out in the Home Office document, Controlling our borders: Making migration work for Britain, the dilemma that the UK, among other European countries, faces in dealing with asylum seekers and they give fair warning about the ways in which they will deal with the problem. I am of course aware that this debate is perhaps more concerned with the inadequacy of current controls rather than the need to adhere to international laws that protect asylum seekers.

But my concern here is to underline the need to bear in mind the principles and practices governing the treatment of refugees which is enshrined in several international treaties, notably the 1951 UN Convention on Refugees. Although this document was drawn up in the chaos of the aftermath of World War II when Europe was awash with displaced people, the fundamental principle of protection of the vulnerable applies equally today.

I have a special interest in Section 5 of the Home Office document which noble Lords will know refers to removals—whether by means of assisted schemes, voluntary returns or return to safe third countries. Paragraph 76 also refers to unaccompanied asylum seeking children and concludes that it is not in the child's best interests to remain in the UK separated from parents and announces the start of a project to undertake return of these children to Albania. This is a complicated business. There are many, many reasons why children end up as unaccompanied asylum seekers. For example, given the increasing obstacles to asylum introduced throughout Europe in the past few years, desperate
 
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migrants, whether genuine refugees or not, have no alternative but to seek other ways to leave economic or political persecution. Some will deliberately take along young children believing that their chances of successful asylum application will be strengthened. Others tell false stories hugely to their disadvantage in order to pass through immigration controls.

More sinister, however, are the rise in illegal methods and the exponential increase in trafficking of drugs and of women and children for prostitution. The statistics in so far as they are known—and we have to accept that in this brutal underworld of people trafficking we know relatively little—are shocking. It is estimated that thousands of illegal would-be entrants have perished in the seas separating Europe from north Africa and eastern Europe. Traffickers aiming for a quick getaway force asylum seekers off boats at gunpoint. There is nothing to protect asylum seekers who use smugglers with the result that these people, if they survive the journey, are drawn into a network of exploitative relationships in order to pay off debts.

Children are an especially vulnerable group and we know that trafficking of young children from eastern, central and southern Europe for the purpose of prostitution in western Europe and beyond has become big business. The smuggling of children from Albania is widespread partly because of its geographical position. It is estimated that something like 4,000 children were trafficked from Albania to Greece between 1992 and 2000. Repatriation of these children with a view to family reunification is not therefore a simple solution.

Child asylum seekers are possibly the least protected group of children under UK domestic law. The Refugee Children's Consortium, a network of some 28 child-focused NGOs, points out that the refusal rates for indefinite leave are very high for children when compared with adults and the Home Office decision-making procedures have been repeatedly criticised by the Home Affairs Select Committee and by Amnesty International. Children are not guaranteed legal representation and guardians to see them through the process are rarely appointed. The result is that the special conditions which have driven a child to become an asylum seeker are inadequately researched and serious errors in repatriation can and do occur.

As a result of the ever-present threat to children UNHCR—the UN refugee agency—and Save the Children have published a statement of good practice that incorporates some of the relevant provisions of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child to which the UK is a party. The statement makes clear that child refugees must receive special attention to ensure that the child is involved in decisions that affect his or her future, that he or she is never returned to a context of unsafety and that every effort is made to establish what is in fact in the child's best interest—something that may well be counterintuitive, particularly in those countries where trafficking is rampant and where the social service infrastructure is weak and child protection measures wholly inadequate.
 
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All other factors such as the fight against illegal immigration should be secondary to the fundamental protection to which a child is entitled and governments are obliged to provide. I would therefore like to seek the assurance of the Minister that the good practice provisions referred to be made statutory in any forthcoming legislation concerning asylum seekers.

Lord Clinton-Davis: My Lords, I had the good fortune—I hope that he thinks the same of me—of travelling to Pakistan with the noble Lord, Lord Waddington, who proved to be a good and affable companion. But that does not stop him from suffering from tunnel vision when it comes to issues of asylum and immigration. All who take his point of view argue about balancing, moderation and immigration. Then they embark on the most immoderate of approaches and, unfortunately, that was the case today. Hardly a word emerged from his lips about those who are leaving the United Kingdom. Fortunately, some sort of balance has been applied in this debate, and I thank all those who have participated.

We should be chary of playing into the hands of extremists and racists, which has been done in part today, notably by the noble Lords, Lord Waddington and Lord Lamont. Some 34 years ago, I made a speech on this issue in Committee in another place in 1971. It was then that I quoted the debate that had taken place on the Aliens Bill in 1904—more than a hundred years ago—but redolent of much of that, in my opinion, is ill-advisedly advanced today. At that time it was the Jews, fleeing from persecution in the East in large measure. The Chinese were not immune from that. Together, they were the butt of the racists' abuse. Attacks, not dissimilar from those iterated today, about seeking to enter this country, were replete, but exemplified by somebody from the Conservative side who represented Bethnal Green of all places—Major Evans Gordon. He asserted that the burdens of immigration were being transferred to the poorest and most helpless. Unfortunately, we hear that again. He spoke emotively of people driven from their homes deprived of their work and of an "unrestricted influx". Those ugly words are also repeated today, all too often.

Sadly, all this was iterated by the then Conservative Ministers. Those "undesirables" all too often became valued members of the community. My own grandparents were among those assailed and I am not prepared to condone what happened at that time when the voice of moderation was hardly ever heard. There was no balanced debate about immigration. All that happened at that time was that the bigoted views of a few became wholesale in their application. I do not say that a complete parallel should be drawn with the past, although some would do well not to overlook it. I am thinking particularly of the Leader of the Opposition. He would be among the first, in my view, who ought to pay a tribute to those who have exercised some degree of moderation as far as this is concerned.
 
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I do not argue for a complete absence of immigration controls, because that would be impractical and impossible. What I contend is that recognition should come from immigration authorities and from politicians that most immigrants, and certainly asylum seekers, who come here are looking for a better life and better opportunities than they have experienced elsewhere.

Both therefore are entitled to be dealt with civilly, rather than in a hostile fashion, particularly when their claim is rejected or when they take up residence. Regretably this is not always the case. The shrill claims that are heard about asylum seekers and immigrants are unacceptable.

If claimants deliberately break the law, then normally, and I stress normally, they should be returned to their place of departure. But we have an obligation to look at that place as well, to make sure that there are no kinds of ordeal to which they would be subjected. They are still entitled to respect, and that they do not always have.

In my view the press and the public media have an especially significant role to play. Their role should not be to inflame the situation—a role gleefully adopted by some tabloids in particular, although certain broadsheets are not immune from blame. Their task should be to educate and inform about the reality, and not as so often happens to distort those realities. Asylum and immigration are hugely sensitive topics and should be dealt with sensitively.

Having said all that, I am glad that we have had the opportunity to debate those issues—I hope, moderately.

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