Nationality and Borders Bill

Part of the debate – in a Public Bill Committee at 2:01 pm on 23 September 2021.

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Rossella Pagliuchi-Lor:

Yes and no. Having resettlement schemes and other legal pathways, such as a well-functioning and perhaps slightly more generous family reunion mechanism, will certainly allow certain people to come legally where they might otherwise have been tempted to do so irregularly. However, the reality is that resettlement programmes—even a generous and well-run resettlement programme such as the VPRS—are really a bit of a drop in the bucket. You have to consider that, in any given year, we manage to resettle a fraction of 1% of the refugees who would be in need of resettlement. There is really a vast disproportion. That is why we say that resettlement is extremely valuable, is a life-saving mechanism—and we really commend the UK for its efforts in this sense—but is not an offset for granting asylum.