My Lords, it is a privilege to contribute again to the deliberations in Committee on this important Bill. We agree with all the amendments in this particular group, but I shall speak specifically to Amendment 114 and then Amendment 113.
On Amendment 114, I join the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, and I am sure all other Members of the Committee, in paying tribute to my noble friend Lord Dubs for the work he has done over so many years. He is an example and inspiration to us all, with respect to family reunion. The reason I want to highlight Amendment 114 is to lay out the importance of international action on this. That is why the refugee convention is so important to us. We saw the collapse of the world order, if you like, after the Second World War. As was mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Alton, earlier, the world back then, of all political persuasions and ideologies, did not all split asunder and pull the drawbridge up on their own countries; they said that this was a common problem of such massive importance that they had to work together to achieve anything.
The 1951 refugee convention is not an old document but still speaks to us and is relevant today. It may have been written in 1951, 70-odd years ago, but it speaks as resoundingly to the people of the world today as it did then. Why do I say that? Like many Members of this Committee, I think Amendment 114 is important because it talks about the United Nations and it talks about international actions. It is a probing amendment —we are not asking the Government to accept it—but it is using the Committee to put pressure on the Government to say, as a senior global power, a member of the United Nations Security Council, a senior member of NATO, a power that has resonance across the world—notwithstanding some of the reputational damage that I think this Bill is causing—that we make a difference. What we say makes a difference.
In Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan—all of those countries—their refugee problems dwarf ours, let alone if we consider those in Africa. As I think I mentioned before, I went to Angola, where they had a refugee camp of a million people—some of the poorest people in the world dealing with some of the most difficult
circumstances. On the border of Syria and Jordan, as I think I mentioned before, there is a huge refugee camp with people pouring across the border to escape war. Those countries—Jordan and Turkey—did not turn their back on those people; they worked to try to deal with it.
What I am saying about that international response, that international action, such is the difficulty that we are facing across the world—for all sorts of reasons, and we can debate why that is and why that is not—is that if we do not join together, we have got real problems in actually sorting this out. It is beyond the capacity and capability of one country to do that, notwithstanding the attempts. I say this: there will be a nationality and borders Bill 3 and a nationality and borders Bill 4 in trying to deal with this if the UK Government try to deal with it on their own.
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