Earl Attlee
Main Page: Earl Attlee (Conservative - Excepted Hereditary)
Earl Attlee (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Roberts of Llandudno for once again valiantly trying to change UK government policy in this area. The difficulty is that successive UK Governments have not allowed asylum seekers to work, and for very good reason. On the face of it, and especially for the general public, it appears to be an odd position to maintain, but it is the right one.
I, too, welcome my noble friend the Minister to her new role and in this important and interesting area of government policy. However, I hope that she can resist the tempting dish that my noble friend has so skilfully offered her.
The last time we debated this issue, noble Lords explained—as I expect some will explain today—how valuable to one’s self-esteem is the ability to work and support society. I totally agree. My wife’s brother-in-law has vascular dementia and his short-term memory is down to 30 seconds or less. However, under direct immediate supervision, he is still able to help me in my classic commercial vehicle restoration activities. By the time he gets home, he has absolutely no idea of what he has done or where he has been. The interesting point is this: his feel-good benefit lasts all evening, and my sister-in-law reports that he is much easier to look after, so we can agree that work is good for you. The Committee should not forget that asylum seekers can undertake voluntary work, but I accept that it might be difficult to find.
The problem is that most of the working-age population of the world would like to come to our green and pleasant land to live and work—if not here, then to the United States, where they have similar problems. It is no good looking at other EU states that have more relaxed rules without understanding the full context of those rules or accepting that the UK is the most desirable destination in the EU. I think that answers my noble friend’s point about why we receive more applications for asylum than other EU states that have more relaxed rules about work. If I am wrong, why do people dice with death trying to get to the UK?
There is a well trodden route for economic migrants from outside the EU. They apply for a visa, start working in the informal sector of the economy—thus, to some extent, depressing the market rate for legitimate workers—and eventually, we hope, they will be detected as overstayers. At this point they might suddenly remember that they are asylum seekers. Alternatively, they obtain a visitor’s visa, travel to the UK and immediately claim asylum, possibly having destroyed their travel documents en route. In many cases, it is advantageous for them to make their claim as difficult and as time-consuming as possible in order to stay in the UK for as long as possible.
If my noble friend the Minister were to comply with my noble friend’s wishes, the number of economic migrants would undoubtedly increase. This would have an adverse effect on three deserving groups. First, it will affect those genuine visitors seeking a visitor’s visa, who will inevitably find it harder to get one if they are a borderline case. Secondly, those asylum seekers who have a genuine but complex case will find that it will take longer than necessary to determine because finite resources are being expended on bogus cases. Finally, the UK taxpayer will have to devote more resources to running the system.
I hope that the Committee does not see me as an out-and-out xenophobe, because I am not. I look forward to a later opportunity to give the Committee—or perhaps the whole House—my views on the benefits of the free movement of labour throughout the Community and, in particular, how this benefits us and other EU states. Offering work to asylum seekers will benefit no one, and we certainly cannot welcome everyone, from anywhere, who wants to come and work here.