My Lords, I would like to inject a note of caution into the debate, which has been a little one-sided. I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, is right in suggesting that there is widespread support for refugees, and especially children. Nobody is more qualified to say that than he is. The question is how to do it, and that needs a little bit of thought. The proposal is to relocate 3,000 unaccompanied children from Europe, and that is entirely understandable. It is entirely right to offer refuge where that is in the best interests of the children. However, I think I have a slight difficulty over the suggestion that these children should be selected from those already in Europe. The reason for that is this: there is some risk that it would encourage families to send their children in advance in the hope that that would later open the door, as it were, for the rest of the family to claim asylum.
The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, did not seem to think that there was very much in that, but there is some evidence from Sweden that that has been the case, and we have had some experience with Albania, when a very large number of families got the idea that,
if the children went first, they could follow. We need to be careful of that, and conscious that this could become a selling point for people smugglers in the camps around Syria itself.
Let us take orphan children, by all means, but I rather think it might be better to take them from the camps around Syria and to do so on UNHCR advice. We are doing that already with families, and I do not see why we should not extend that—indeed, I believe we should extend it—to orphan children in those camps. The UNHCR could provide an objective account of those children’s circumstances and take a view as to whether there was perhaps a better solution involving the child’s extended family. Remember, extended families in Syria are very close, very strong and very important. I suggest that we would do better to reinforce our work with the UNHCR. By all means increase the numbers, but let us be quite sure that we do it in a way that does not have a downside attached to it.