Meeting of the Parliament 10 January 2024
I am grateful to the Government for bringing the motion to Parliament this afternoon. As Paul O’Kane said, here we are again. It is vitally important that this chamber comes together as often as possible to reassert our collective view on the UK Conservative Government’s policy moves in this area.
So many times in debates such as this, I have leaned into the words of another. I will do so again, with the words of the author Dina Nayeri, who was just a child when she was forced to flee from Iran. She said:
“It is the obligation of every person born in a safer room to open the door when someone in danger knocks.”
The “obligation”—her word. I last spoke about our obligation to those seeking safe harbour on our shores when the chamber debated the Equalities and Human Rights Committee report on asylum seekers in Scotland. That has been referenced several times this afternoon, and rightly so. I was heartened by the debate that we had on that occasion, which fostered a largely consensual tone.
Sadly, quite the opposite was true last month in the House of Commons, when the ruling Conservative Party—among them all six Scottish Conservative MPs, including Douglas Ross—voted to pass the Government’s Rwanda plan bill on its second reading. The bill would see planeloads of vulnerable people who have sought refuge and asylum here deported 4,000 miles away to a country that the UK Supreme Court has deemed to be unsafe for them. We hear a lot about moral panic in our society, but I want to see a moral panic about that.
Instead of backing down and seeing the error of his ways, Rishi Sunak is pressing on with ill-fated attempts to pass a bill that states that Rwanda is a safe country—a policy that it now appears he disagreed with when he was UK chancellor. The bill prevents judges from ruling otherwise and lays aside key aspects of our human rights legislation. That, in turn, would bypass the Human Rights Act 1998 entirely, undermine the independence of our courts and, indeed, damage our reputation internationally—if there is much of a reputation left. The bill has yet to reach the amendment phase, where extreme factions of the Conservative Party will undoubtedly attempt to make it even more odious.
We have badly forgotten the obligation that Dina Nayeri writes of. Douglas Ross and his colleagues have forgotten that this country is made up of those who came here from other shores and that the proudest moments in our nation’s history have been defined by offering shelter to those in need, such as those who came here on the Kindertransport during the second world war, or those from Biafra.
Instead, we have asylum seekers living on barges that look more like prisons. The conditions there foster a feeling of such hopelessness that a 27-year-old on one even took his life in the very week that we debated this policy last, at the end of last year. A fellow asylum seeker, and that 27-year-old’s roommate on the barge, Yusuf Deen Kargbo, spoke just today of how those living there
“don’t have any hope for their lives ... that place is not good for them. Every day their stress is increasing, getting worse.”
In 2021, the number of asylum applications in the United Kingdom reached more than 81,000, largely due to war and conflict. Asylum seekers are entitled to a roof over their head and little more. They are not allowed to work and have no access to public funds in the form of benefits and social security. Those rights are only granted if those people are recognised as refugees, which, due to horrendous Home Office backlogs, can still take months or even years. Those who are not granted asylum often find themselves in destitution and at risk of exploitation, with only charities to rely on for support.
Scottish Liberal Democrats believe that we have a human duty to offer protection and safe legal routes to people who are fleeing torment. We need the next UK Government to create a dedicated, arm’s-length unit to make asylum decisions quickly and more fairly, with a new right to work for those who are seeking asylum if they have to wait longer than three months for a decision on their case, in order to treat them more humanely, give them the chance to integrate in their communities and save the taxpayer tens of millions of pounds. Those are people who are hungry to contribute back to the society that is giving them refuge.
We also welcome the recommendations of the recent report, “The Human Rights of Asylum Seekers in Scotland”.
Those seeking safe harbour should always be treated with our utmost respect. Our approach should be guided by compassion and rooted in human rights and respect for international law. Asylum seekers should be entitled to education and information about their rights, particularly in relation to health and mental health. They should not be asked to travel the length and breadth of the British Isles for an assessment interview. Scottish local authorities should be given the resources that they need to provide the language and interpreter services that are vital in helping people to settle here.
We should also offer support to the third sector organisations that often provide the safety net for those whose applications are denied. Liberal Democrats will always stand up for those who are marginalised and demonised. We care passionately about people on the other side of the planet whom we may never meet, some of whom are making their way here with hope and a promise of home. We stand against the dangerous rhetoric that we have heard from the Conservative members of Parliament in London—that is our obligation.