My Lords, much has been said about the part played by modern communications in the current conflict. Part of that is that we cannot claim ignorance of what is happening. The media, NGOs, colleagues and friends—I, too, have friends who have undertaken voluntary work in northern France—make so abundantly clear what is happening that we cannot escape that information.
I want to pick up on a couple of points that are used as arguments in this debate. One is the idea that children should be kept in their own region and culture, among people from similar backgrounds. Leave aside the variety of people who are volunteering to help children, is it better for children to stay in the region or to be alive, with shelter, not being abused or trafficked, and with access to food, education, health services and so on? Do we keep children in the region so they can be reunited with their families?
I am not persuaded that the administration and the records that will be available if they stay in the region will be better than they would be if the children were brought to this country through a government scheme. I am sure the records will be kept very carefully. I have seen somewhere that the UNHCR regards the chances of relocation if children are brought to this country as still being high. On the question of family reunion—children who are refugees in their own right have rights—it is said that this is, in fact, an underhand way of getting the rest of the family into the UK by sending the children on ahead. I simply do not believe that that is likely except, perhaps, in a very small handful of cases. In any event, the children have rights.
In previous debates I have acknowledged the difficulties in finding foster parents. I know what is said about all the volunteers: there is a general shortage of foster parents for British children. Maybe this will break some sort of logjam. I acknowledge the support that will be needed for foster parents and for local authorities. It is very important to recognise all that because people who are dealing with these children will be dealing with very sensitive, difficult, delicate situations and children who, almost inevitably, will have been damaged. We hope that this is an exercise in not damaging them further.
Like other noble Lords, I have been fascinated by the extracts from Hansard from 1938 and 1939. Not only are the arguments those that are being used today but the ancestors of a number of current Members appear in them. The then Earl of Listowel pointed to a precedent on which Her Majesty’s Government had acted before: the work of the International Red Cross in the south of France. Our shared heroine, Eleanor Rathbone, said:
“We are apparently willing to abandon them”—
the refugees—
“to the danger of being handed over to their deadly enemies rather than risk a few thousand pounds in bringing them over. I know that the Under-Secretary has sympathy in this matter, and I appeal to him to do something to speed up the mechanism and to relax these regulations … Cannot we risk a few thousand pounds rather than abandon these people to the terrible fate that may possibly await them? I feel that in this small matter we may appeal with some hope of success for the Government to adopt a more farsighted and generous policy than heretofore”.—[Official Report, Commons, 31/1/1939; col. 151.]
The leader of the Liberal Democrats, Tim Farron, has been very clear about our party’s stance on this and has been a part of the call for the Government to enable this number of children to be brought here. He has done so because, as the noble Lord, Lord Judd, said, it is right. However, this is not a party-political issue. What is most important is that this has caught the public mood of the moment and we should go with it.