I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Angus Brendan MacNeil) for sponsoring this most important Bill, and for his excellent and eloquent speech. His remarks were in sharp contrast to those by the hon. Member for North East Hampshire (Mr Jayawardena), who does not know the difference between a refugee and a migrant, and who clearly has not read the Bill. I also thank many constituents from Dundee who support this Bill, and who have emailed or written to me, and sent me messages on Facebook, in the run-up to this debate.
We face unprecedented times. More than 65 million people around the world have been forced from their homes owing to conflict, persecution, and the effects of climate change. That is the entire population of the United Kingdom. More than 22 million of those people
are refugees, and half of them children. Every Member of the House was once a child, so let us keep that at the heart of our debate today. Many of those children have been torn away from their families and are desperate to be reunited with them, but they are being kept apart thanks to bureaucratic hurdles in UK policy.
Make no mistake: the UK Government’s refugee family reunion rules are restrictive and unfair, and refugees who have reached safety in the UK can find it impossible to bring their family members to join them. Currently, the only family members who are allowed to join adult refugees in the UK are someone’s partner and dependent children, but only those under the age of 18. Unaccompanied children granted refugee status have no right to be reunited with their brother or sister, mother or father. That means that family members who have become separated and remain outside the UK are left with the invidious choice of staying in dangerous places or embarking on treacherous, expensive, and unregulated journeys. Only after surviving that journey and reaching European shores does the UK legally recognise someone’s sibling, aunt, uncle or grandparent as a family member with whom they can reunite. Let us not forget that last year more than 3,000 people died making the dangerous journey across the Mediterranean—a disgraceful border that the EU has put up on the shores of northern Africa.