Refugee Integration

Baroness Neuberger Excerpts

Thursday 18th January 2024 Grand Committee

[Baroness Neuberger (CB)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as chair of the Schwab & Westheimer Trust helping young asylum seekers and refugees access higher education and as a member of the Woolf Institute’s Commission on the Integration of Refugees—directly relevant. I also declare an interest as chair of University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. This is particularly relevant with UCLH, because it hosts the RESPOND team, an integrated asylum seeker and refugee service, which has been so successful in treating asylum seekers and refugees, under the leadership of the amazing Dr Sarah Eisen, that it was highly commended for a Health Service Journal award last year.

Asylum seekers and refugees face multiple barriers in accessing health services, and a direct outreach service can work wonders. Sadly, the main outreach service is closed at present, due to funding and commissioning issues, but this work is directly relevant. The Woolf commission’s report will be launched in March and is likely to recommend that the NHS collaborate with the third sector to carry out joint strategic needs assessments to understand the composition and needs of local asylum seeker and refugee populations. Those needs assessments should then be used to plan, develop and provide integrated care systems that are relevant, inclusive and responsive to any issues relating to community cohesion, as the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, just talked about, or to address health inequalities—exactly what RESPOND was set up for.

A further recommendation from the Woolf report is likely to be around the employment of refugees and indeed of asylum seekers while awaiting decisions. Once again, University College Hospital has tried to help, and not purely for moral reasons. Staff shortages are such that it makes no sense to have qualified health workers in our asylum system or newly accepted as refugees who cannot work with us. We started back in March 2022 in partnership with Liverpool John Moores University and recruited a mere four refugees. Two have since passed their OSCE, a test of professional competence required of anyone trained in another country who wishes to work as a registered nurse in the UK, and are now working with us, while two are finalising their training. It takes ages, as the noble Lord, Lord German, said, and it is expensive. However, this is exactly what we should be doing nationally on a far greater scale. It may be expensive to have such a system, but it is much more expensive if we cannot recruit at all. We have skills shortages while there are refugees who could fill the gaps and want to do so, but at present it is unbelievably hard to get into the NHS system, either as staff or as a patient, if you are an asylum seeker or even a refugee with status.

Can the Minister give us comfort that the Government are looking at this? Will they make it easier to work in the NHS as an asylum seeker or a refugee? Will they now fund outreach to asylum seekers and refugees from within the NHS to help deal with appalling illnesses and address shocking health inequalities? It is quite clear what should be done; the question is whether the Government will make it easier to do so.