Vulnerable Persons Resettlement Scheme

Baroness Hamwee Excerpts

Thursday 7th June 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, I too thank my noble friend Lord Scriven for giving us the opportunity for this debate and for his thoughtful and humane, as well as human, introduction. As the right reverend Prelate did, I thank the independent chief inspector and his staff and, of course, all the individuals involved in the scheme. We each have more time available to debate this Motion this afternoon than I had anticipated. I fear that I may take more advantage of that than some other speakers. I will also use this opportunity to say how sorry I am that there could not have been more of an equalisation between this debate and the earlier debate, although I dare say that the four-minute time limit produced some pretty sparky speeches earlier today.

It was pleasing to read that the scheme is “essentially effective”, although that is obviously within its own terms. I will try not to stray too far from the scheme, but the House will recognise the ambitions of these Benches regarding refugees and asylum seekers. The inspector expressed his disappointment at the Government’s response committing to “few if any actions”. I share that disappointment, not least because the issues have wider application than the VPRS, which is a particular scheme about particular cohorts. But external review and assessment are relevant to other schemes, other situations, other asylum seekers and refugees as well as to future participants in the vulnerable persons resettlement scheme.

We are told by the Library—like the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, I am grateful to it for a very helpful briefing—that the International Organization for Migration has said:

“Resettlement cannot be viewed as a one-off effort”.


It referred to it as “a holistic process”. We will all have met refugees who say how relieved they were to reach the UK and how grateful they are to the UK, but then describe the difficulties they have encountered and the obstacles to their becoming able to play their part in society and in the community which has adopted them.

The Government’s response to the chief inspector’s report is framed in terms of accepting or partially accepting the recommendations. Looking at that from the other side, partial acceptance means that the findings of the report—the basis for the recommendations—are, at least in part, not accepted. I realised that I do not know the extent of the Government’s engagement with the inspectorate on this. The report sets out the methodology, which to me looks pretty energetic. However, I do not have the expertise and have no idea about the optimum sample for each aspect of the process, so I do not know whether I agree or disagree with my noble friend Lord Roberts on this. The report included a walk-through of casework, allocations, arrivals and so on, along with the examination of 154 case records and interviews. I have not picked up whether there were similar exercises with DfID and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, which are partners in the scheme.

I have a technical question to the Minister about whether the Home Office has discussed the recommendations with the inspectorate. If it did, was that before publication? I am interested in understanding whether, for the Government, this was a paper exercise or something more exploratory.

I have two particular reasons for being interested in this. Yesterday the Joint Committee on Human Rights, of which I am a member—I see that my colleague the noble Baroness, Lady Prosser, is listening to this debate—questioned the Home Secretary and a senior civil servant about the detention of members of the Windrush generation. I had a question for him about challenging Home Office processes—internal challenge, that is—and the civil servant mentioned quality assurance. Inspection, it seems to me, is part of quality assurance.

One of the recommendations in the report is about best practice and guidance based on monitoring, analysis and evaluation. The Library has helpfully drawn our attention to the National Audit Office report of September 2016 on the scheme, along with the work that the Commons Public Accounts Committee did based on that, following the NAO report. The NAO recommended greater monitoring and development of evaluation measures while the Public Accounts Committee recommended improved monitoring and evaluation of certain aspects. There is something of a theme here, perhaps related to my noble friend Lord Scriven’s reference to the use—I stress “use”—of data.

There is something of a thread, too, running through the inspector’s recommendations on the use of the pre-departure period and the scheme’s communications strategy and the Public Accounts Committee’s recommendation on,

“full and clear communication with refugees about the programme—including the services they can expect, their entitlements, restrictions, and the implications of having ‘humanitarian protection’ status”.

That is a direct quote from the committee’s report. On the use of the pre-departure period, we are told that the Government accept the inspector’s recommendations in full. There seems to have been something of a “but” there, though, because the government response then went on to say:

“Implementation of any changes, however, will depend on the establishment of a credible evidence base for changing the current process and timescales as well as an assessment of the benefits of any changes, which would need to outweigh any additional costs. The Department will review the feasibility of options to help reduce the anxieties of those waiting for an arrival date”.


That does not seem to be a wholehearted acceptance of the point made in the report.

The chief inspector has also referred to learning English for reasons of work, study, volunteering and community activities—I think I would sum that up as everyday life. This cannot be a surprise to any noble Lords. No one disagrees with the importance of facility in the language, but it is an issue that is always raised in discussions about what is most helpful to refugees in settling in the UK. In 2016, the organisation Refugee Action published Let Refugees Learn, a report on the challenges and opportunities to improve language provision. It included comments from a number of refugees. Pauline, from the DRC, said that,

“when you can’t talk to people, it’s really very hard. They smile but can’t talk to you and you can’t talk to them”.

I thought that was a very moving summary of the position.

This week, the same organisation told a meeting that I attended about the same issues as in that report of two years ago, in the context of loneliness experienced by refugees. People are asking for more hours per week—I do not mean more hours in the week but more hours of teaching—as many of them get no more than two hours; the need for childcare while the parents attend a class; and comments that too often classes are not accessed by or accessible to women. I had not taken in before that it is the head of the household who is enrolled at the jobcentre, so that is the person who is referred for language lessons—and that is of course usually the man.

One particular point in the Home Office report puzzled me. It was about the treatment of pregnant women and their fitness to fly. The response confirms that the department will,

“strengthen internal guidance and staff training on how to deal with cases that involve pregnant women, to further emphasise that there should not be an automatic assumption that they should not travel”,

but it goes on to say that those cases,

“will only be prioritised where UNHCR categorise it as urgent or an emergency”.

Urgency is not a static condition. There may not be urgency in the earlier months of pregnancy, but I think that one can fairly reliably expect that the matter will become more urgent as the months go by. That is about future family. My noble friend talked about family. I am told that often, a refugee’s first question on arriving here is: “When can my family join me?”. It is the most important of their many concerns.

Finally, the inspector commented on the front-loading of the pipeline of referrals. The report tells us that,

“planning and resourcing for operations in the region beyond mid-2018 is a challenge”.

We are in mid-2018, so I end by asking the Minister: what is the position on this issue now?