Refugees: Community Sponsorship
Lord Bishop of Chelmsford Excerpts(4 days, 14 hours ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Lord Bishop of Chelmsford
To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the number of refugees that will be settled annually through community sponsorship; and what steps they are taking to provide adequate resources and support to sponsors.
The Lord Bishop of Chelmsford
My Lords, I am grateful to have secured this debate, and to those who will speak. Community sponsorship offers a distinctive approach to refugee settlement. It enables people not simply to welcome refugees in principle but to stand alongside them in practice in securing a home, navigating unfamiliar systems and building relationships and new lives. It is a considerable commitment and an expression of the best of our civic life—or, as the Prime Minister might choose to see it, a courageous example of hope, where families are welcomed by their neighbours. It has been a privilege to witness the scheme’s extraordinary capacity to transform the lives of displaced people and enrich communities in my own diocese of Chelmsford, and across the UK, since its launch at Lambeth Palace in 2016. People want to help provide refugee protection.
The Government’s role is to create a safe, managed and sustainable framework that turns that willingness into action; I am grateful for their commitment in wanting to make that work. My understanding is that the Government will open applications to the scheme today. If I am correct, that will be an important milestone. I hope that this debate offers an opportunity for the Minister to share more about the Government’s ambitions for partnership working with communities and sponsors to make this pathway a joint success. Communities need to know what is expected of them, how many refugees the programme hopes to support, and what resources are available. These are questions of ambition, capacity and responsibility, which I hope we can explore a little today.
The Government want to restore public confidence in the migration system. We all see the human tragedy of people risking their lives in small boats and we hear concerns about pressures on services, housing and cohesion, yet these concerns are too often presented as a choice between compassion and control. The model of community sponsorship demonstrates that this is a false choice. It offers a safe, regular and well-managed route for refugees to rebuild their lives while strengthening communities.
In this scheme, communities choose to participate. Numbers are known and arrivals prepared for. Accommodation and support are planned and secured beforehand. This contrasts starkly with disorderly arrivals, emergency hotels and last-minute dispersals, which undermine trust and fuel anxiety. Sponsorship instead encourages cohesion, establishes relationships from the start and leads to faster integration. Evidence shows that sponsored refugees learn English more quickly, find work sooner and rely less on public services, because support helps their independence, reducing the long-term costs associated with homelessness, unemployment and poor health.
It is right that the scale of sponsorship is driven by the willingness and capacity of communities rather than by an arbitrary cap, but how will the Government assess that capacity, and the potential for growth, as infrastructure develops through new pathways for education and employment? How will faith groups, refugee-led organisations, voluntary sector organisations and local authorities be consulted before numbers are determined?
Sponsorship should also be a flexible national asset that can be mobilised rapidly in response to emerging humanitarian disasters. A mature system could provide a durable framework for future crises without requiring entirely new programmes. Homes for Ukraine demonstrated the public’s willingness to respond, with over 175,000 arrivals. The Government have said that arrivals through the resettlement scheme and sponsorship routes will initially number in the hundreds rising to the low thousands. However, they must ensure they do not constrain the ambition of willing sponsors. In time, I hope the scheme will become fully accessible to other parts of the world, not just those currently named. The existing scheme has supported more than 1,200 refugees through over 200 sponsors. Canada’s comparable programme has resettled over 440,000 refugees since 1979.
In preparing for this debate, I contacted organisations supporting refugees, as well as the Church of England, to gauge their interest in participating. I heard from the Salvation Army, Welcome Churches, the Pickwell Foundation, Refugee Education UK, Citizens UK, REST, Rohingya Association UK, the Welsh Refugee Council and Micro Rainbow. That is an impressive and diverse group of potential partners. It is important that government and this House welcome the welcomers. Community sponsorship is emotionally and practically demanding, particularly in divisive times. Those giving their time and resources should be recognised and protected. Civil society and government must work closely together so the welcomers feel confident to provide support effectively. I hope that today is a helpful opportunity for the Minister to place on record the Government’s thanks to these thousands of volunteers who have supported refugees through sponsorship schemes over the past decade and will be integral in the future.
My Question also concerns the support available to sponsors. It would be easy to focus on funding without acknowledging the Government’s considerable investment in the processing requirements, including overseas vetting and logistical arrangements. What plans do the Government have to build societal infrastructure so that community sponsorship becomes a self-sustaining, resilient and community-owned model? Generosity cannot replace professional support, so how will the Government help lead sponsors to offer specialist assistance, including training, safeguarding and administrative support? How will they ensure that sponsorship remains accessible to less affluent groups that wish to participate, including local churches and faith groups?
The Question before us today is not simply how many refugees the Government intend to welcome through sponsorship; it is whether they are ready to build a programme that communities can participate in confidently and on which refugees can rely. Community sponsorship can be a powerful expression of shared responsibility. It is a safe and controlled model and, importantly, it is rooted in the best of who we are as a society. With proper planning, sustained support and a clear commitment from government, it can offer refugees not only safety but the opportunity to belong, to flourish and to contribute.
Statement of Changes in Immigration Rules
Lord Bishop of Chelmsford Excerpts(6 days, 14 hours ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Lord Bishop of Chelmsford
My Lords, I begin by acknowledging the support that I have received from RAMP as one of its principals. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, for creating this important opportunity to take note of and discuss the Government’s new single protection interview process, introduced through the Statement of Changes in Immigration Rules. I acknowledge that procedural changes will often need to be facilitated through secondary legislation, but the nature of the changes before us raises substantial questions, which I am pleased can now be explored with Ministers in this House.
Organisations such as the Helen Bamber Foundation and Freedom from Torture have argued that the changes represent a “substantial shift” in procedure, as the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee highlighted. It therefore seems appropriate that time is allocated for proper parliamentary scrutiny. This is particularly pertinent if the Government wish at a future date to expand the use of a single protection interview. Can the Minister provide reassurance that, if that were to happen, there will be a further opportunity to discuss the merits of such an approach and consider the necessary safeguards that might be required?
The Government’s objective to improve the effectiveness and timeliness of our asylum system is entirely legitimate and welcome, but we must distinguish carefully between administrative efficiency and justice. As the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, has said, speed must not come at the expense of fairness. Are the Government confident that the new process will be able reliably to distinguish an unfounded claim from a genuine one that has not yet been fully understood and where additional information might be required?
The purpose of an asylum system is of course not simply to process claims but to identify people who genuinely need protection. The scrutiny committee’s key concern is pertinent here. If I am right in my understanding that the Government have confirmed that applicants will retain the right to submit further information, why then remove the Immigration Rules’ explicit guarantee of that right?
The SPI relies on the Home Office identifying appropriate cases before vulnerability, trafficking indicators, trauma, sexual orientation or safeguarding concerns have been fully explored. But as the Government know, evidence consistently shows that many survivors of torture, trafficking and other forms of serious harm do not disclose these experiences at the earliest stage of the asylum process. Even if these characteristics are identified, there will presumably need to be an assessment of whether the safeguarding or vulnerability indicator meets a threshold to qualify for rerouting out of the single process and back into the standard asylum process. Can the Minister provide further information on how suitability decisions will be made and how applicants can challenge inclusion in the process?
The Home Office recognises that survivors of torture, trafficking and those from the LGBTQI+ community often disclose relevant experiences only after trust has been built up. Trauma, shame, fear, exhaustion, unfamiliarity with the asylum process and language barriers can make it difficult to disclose experiences coherently at the first interview, and the most vulnerable may need specialist support to fully disclose evidence. An incomplete first account should not automatically be mistaken for a dishonest or unfounded claim. Can the Government offer reassurance that the new process will not lead to decision-makers reaching premature conclusions before the relevant evidence has been assembled? Does the Minister envisage that identified survivors of torture, trafficking and other serious trauma will be excluded from the SPI process?
The Home Office acknowledges that interviews are often the most important evidence-gathering opportunity. Curtailing that process for this vulnerable cohort risks unfair outcomes. It is also important to remember that, even if a country is generally safe, an individual may face persecution because of their particular circumstances. The assessment must therefore remain individual, not presumptive.
I expect that not every asylum case will require two interviews, but it is important to remember that an unjust refusal, made potentially more likely through the loss of a substantive interview, is not merely an administrative error—it might expose someone to persecution or serious harm. It could also lead to costly litigation and further delays, undermining the very efficiency that the policy is seeking. The risk of refoulement is a serious potential consequence. I want to be clear that I am not suggesting that every SPI decision may be unlawful, but I urge the Government to commit to further parliamentary scrutiny and to consultation with expert stakeholders and publication of evaluation data ahead of removing the procedural safeguard of an additional interview from other groups and for other purposes.
The Government are right to want to resolve clearly unfounded claims quickly to reduce delays and to avoid keeping people in prolonged uncertainty. The policy guidance allows for further investigation and interviews where necessary, which is of course welcome. The issue is whether, in practice, those safeguards will work consistently. I therefore ask the Minister: will interviewers be trained to recognise trauma, vulnerabilities and inconsistencies that may have legitimate explanations? Also, will there be a clearly applied process for transferring a case to the usual process? I appreciate that the Minister may not be able to answer all the questions that I have asked today, but I would be grateful if he could commit to write.
The measure of an asylum system is not simply how quickly it can refuse a claim but how reliably it can recognise a person who genuinely needs protection. A fair system must be capable of refusing unfounded claims but also capable of recognising when a person’s right to asylum is evidence-based, even when they struggle to explain it at first or to provide corroborating information. The questions I have asked are in an effort to understand whether the new process has sufficient safeguards to distinguish effectively between the two. Where the consequences of error may be persecution, torture or even the loss of life, the burden of getting that distinction right is profound. I therefore hope that the Government will take seriously the concerns raised by the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, explain the removal of the express safeguard for further evidence, and commit to transparent monitoring of the new process.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow two such powerful and caring speeches focused on the justice of our asylum system—which, after all, in many cases addresses issues of life and death. I agree with virtually everything that both noble Baronesses said, so, rather than repeat what has been said, I will seek to add a couple of points to it.
We are focusing on the fact that we are talking about people whose lives have all too often been marked by torture, trauma, abuse and other suffering. The reality is that it is difficult for them to just sit down and talk about that. Although I almost always agree with her, the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, described a lot of the language and process here as rather Orwellian. I will take away that “rather” because our own Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee reflected, in paragraph 4 of its report, on the term “merged registration”. That is where one interview covers the registration, the screening of the individual and the establishment and assessment of the basis of the claim. The scrutiny committee says of that term that
“‘merged registration’ does not accurately describe what the process will encompass”.
We should think about those people, very often with English as a second language, being in a really confusing situation. I have a direct question to the Minister: could we not at least call it something that would be immediately understandable if it was to be translated? I note that the committee also said:
“The Home Office may wish to consider using a more helpful, descriptive and easier to understand name”.
Are the Government taking that on board?
The noble Baroness, Lady Lister, referred to a really important report in the context of what we are debating: the June 2026 report by the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration. It is worth revisiting its conclusion, which said that the quality of decision-making in the asylum system
“had declined … and was at an unacceptable level”.
It focused particularly on the problems of hiring staff—the appropriateness of the way in which staff are hired and who is hired—and the retention challenges. Four in 10 decision-makers left between April 2024 and May 2025, and those decision-makers had typically been in position for only 11 months. Again, I ask the Minister directly: will this simply be a cab rank system? Will the people using this process just be whoever is next in the queue or, if this system is to be used, will it be applied by more experienced and, I hope, more skilled and knowledgeable staff, who will have had the chance to experience seeing claims previously?
I also express concern about the Government’s intention to focus on a small number of countries. I will anonymise this quite heavily because I do not know the situation now of the individual concerned but, some years ago, I met a woman in Bristol who told me—I have no doubt that the fear that she was expressing was absolutely genuine—that she was the divorced wife of someone from a very powerful family on the Indian subcontinent and that she feared for her life if she was forced to go back to her home country. That is not a country issue but, as the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, said, individuals may indeed be in a position of genuine fear of persecution in those kinds of circumstances. To know and understand that and be able to read a person’s explanation is a complex thing.
Private Rented Sector: Affordable Rents
Lord Bishop of Chelmsford Excerpts(1 year, 8 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
That is a key question, and I am afraid it is not possible for me to give a specific answer because we have just set aside social housing in local plans. We will be asking local authorities to determine their local need for social housing.
The Lord Bishop of Chelmsford
My Lords, one consequence of sustained high rents in the private sector is the conversion of family homes into HMOs. Are the Government monitoring this trend, and what action are they taking on the loss of family homes in this way?
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
I understand the point the right reverend Prelate makes about the conversion of family homes into HMOs. I do not have those figures here, so I will write to her with a response.