4. Statement by the Leader of the House and Chief Whip: Refugee Week — Wales, a Nation of Sanctuary

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:08 pm on 19 June 2018.

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Photo of Julie James Julie James Labour 4:08, 19 June 2018

Well, I'm glad you support the principle, but I fundamentally disagree with your argument, I have to say. Refugee Week, as I said, started in the UK in 1998 as a direct reaction to hostility in the media and society in general towards refugees and asylum seekers. It's now one of the leading UK initiatives working to counter this negative climate, as I said to Siân Gwenllian earlier, defending the importance of sanctuary and the benefits it can bring to both refugees and host communities, and it's widely celebrated in many other countries—Australia and the United States, for example, and France held their first Refugee Week in 2016, so it's a spreading good-news story.

I simply don't like—. Well, first of all, the statistics that David Rowlands quotes are just not something we recognise here in Wales. Migration here is tiny. As somebody who has spent most of my life abroad because my family were economic migrants, where my father sought work around the world in order to give a better life to his family, I simply cannot find it in my heart to say that somebody fleeing war is a proper refugee, but somebody fleeing starvation or grinding poverty is not. So, Deputy Presiding Officer, I cannot agree with a single thing, other than the general support, that David Rowlands said.