8. Will the Leader of the House make a statement on the integration of refugees and asylum seekers within communities in Mid and West Wales? OAQ52376

Yes. There are very few asylum seekers in Mid and West Wales, but there are over 200 refugees who have been resettled under the Syrian resettlement scheme. In most cases, they are integrating well and are successfully building a new life for themselves here in Wales.

I thank the leader of the house for that statement, and I'm very pleased to hear what she says. The UK has a long history of resettling those who've fled persecution in their homeland, and this is something of which we should be proud and must continue to do. But there is a big difference between refugees fleeing war and persecution and economic migrants, and it's vital that this distinction is not blurred.

I was therefore disturbed to hear the leader of the house say yesterday in response to David Rowlands that: 

'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.'

The definition of a refugee is a person who's forced to leave their country in order to escape war, persecution or natural disaster. If we blur that distinction with those who are economic migrants, then there's virtually no limit to the number of people who we have to admit, and that would, I think, raise a considerable amount of animosity amongst very large numbers of people, which we don't want to see.

So, would the leader of the house agree with me that it is very important that we should be exact in our use of language in this area in order to maintain the maximum possible public acceptance of taking as many refugees, who are true refugees, as possible?

Well, I could not more fundamentally disagree with you if I tried. You were correct in your definition of the word 'refugee'; I was simply talking about the humanity of the situation. I, myself, was an economic migrant across the world, where I was accepted with a very good response in every community to which my family moved, and we moved there in order to have a better economic outcome for our family. I cannot find it in my heart, as I said yesterday, to treat anybody else any differently.