I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. He is right about refugee camps needing more support and the provision of education. Many people spend years and years in refugee camps and their education suffers. However, we want to tackle the cause of this. The reason that people are in refugee camps is war. Unless more is done to stop war and conflict, these refugee camps will continue to exist and there will be more asylum seekers and refugees.
There will no doubt be critics who say that this will open the floodgates, with more people traffickers exploiting young people and more migrants wanting to come to the UK. However, I remind hon. Members that the countries neighbouring Syria, such as Jordan and Turkey, have taken in millions of Syrian refugees, while across Europe, Germany, Italy and France received at least twice as many asylum applications as the UK in 2017. The UK received less than 3% of all asylum claims made in the EU last year. I also remind hon. Members that, in 2017, 3,119 people lost their lives in their desperate attempts to cross the Mediterranean to claim asylum. Even for those who make it to the UK, the
asylum system here is extremely tough, with only 29% of initial asylum applications made in the UK being successful and only 35% of appeals being successful.
I want to give hon. Members an idea of the numbers that will be helped by the Bill introduced by the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar. Last year, only 794 children who arrived in the UK as unaccompanied children were granted asylum. The Bill seeks to help those 794 children—that figure is less than the number of peers in the other place—and allow them to be reunited with their families. Not allowing child refugees to be reunited with their family members is morally wrong, legally wrong and inhumane. I invite all hon. Members to support the hon. Gentleman’s Bill, and I encourage the Government to bring forward a money resolution to allow the Bill to progress so that these children can be reunited with their families.
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