As I am sure no one would disagree, it would only be in the interests of people traffickers—no one else—for children to be encouraged to leave their families and undertake perilous, difficult, dangerous journeys in the hope that their relatives might be able to join them in future; and how much worse if they found themselves forced to do that?
My experience in chairing the inquiry by the all-party parliamentary group on the British Council into resilience to extremism in north Africa and the middle east has shown clearly that there are an appalling number of criminal gangs looking to exploit vulnerable people in the region. Our role must be first to provide support in the region, upholding, for all the reasons we have heard, the principle that those who need international protection should be able to claim it in the first safe country they reach.