UK Parliament / Open data

Nationality and Borders Bill

I will not repeat myself—well, I am going to repeat myself just briefly. If the Government saw refugees as human beings, they would already have written these amendments into the Bill. We are pushing at a closed door at the moment. We should be taking more refugees and creating more safe routes.

I have a word of warning, which is that there will be many climate—ecological—emergencies over the next decade or so and, given that we have contributed a large part of the world’s accumulated CO2 emissions, we have to understand that we have a moral duty to take our share of climate refugees. It is already happening. There are parts of Africa that are now almost uninhabitable because of climate change, and other places will shortly follow. We have to understand that refugees are not a temporary problem but a permanent problem, and there will be a lot more. If we prepare well and put the programmes and the funding in place, we can cope and do it well. However, while the Government treat refugees as criminals and unwanted people, I am afraid that I see this simply as another reason why the Government have to go.

Type
Proceeding contribution
Reference
818 c1485 
Session
2021-22
Chamber / Committee
House of Lords chamber
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