My Lords, I am pleased to have secured this short debate. Anybody who has been to the Jungle in Calais will have been shocked by the squalid conditions there. We see those conditions on television and in our newspapers but there is nothing as awful as being there and seeing them first-hand. Our special concern is of course with the children there.
I am also obviously concerned about unaccompanied child refugees in Greece and Italy. There are two categories of children here. Let me explain this because there is some confusion. There are what are colloquially called Dublin III children: those who have arrived in Europe unaccompanied but who have relatives in this country.
Clearly, if they have relatives in other countries then the responsibility would be to ensure that they join those relatives elsewhere. The Dublin III children have relatives in this country. Indeed, their right to come here was always there, long before we had the debates on the Immigration Act.
Secondly, there are children specifically covered by the amendment to the Immigration Act that I moved. They are different from those under Dublin III although there is some tendency to confuse the two.
I appreciate that the wording of the amendment did not necessarily distinguish between them but one cannot always reword an amendment that has got through after many hours of debate from lots of people. Who has come to this country so far? As far as I know, even to date, no children have come from any of the locationsβbut certainly not from Calaisβcovered specifically by the Immigration Act.
