Nationality and Borders Bill

Lord Coaker Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 1 & Committee stage
Thursday 3rd February 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Green of Deddington (CB)]

I do not see the relevance of that question.

Let me conclude, if I may. As we discussed earlier in this debate, the Government’s asylum workload has tripled from 40,000 cases in 2012 to 120,000 cases in 2021. Furthermore, nearly half of all cases awaiting an initial decision have been waiting for 12 months or more. In the present situation, they would in any case get permission to work. However, it is vital for these delays to be tackled. On that point, the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, and I are agreed. It makes no sense to me to adjust the immigration system to encourage delay. This Bill contains some useful measures designed to speed up the asylum process, and they should be supported.

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

My Lords, I rise to support Amendment 64 and 65. Before I specifically speak to them, I say to the noble Lord, Lord Green, that at some point in this Bill we are going to have to have a debate in this Chamber about the idea that this is a debate between those on the side of the public and those of us who are some kind of middle-class liberal elite who do not care about the opinions of the public—who believe that we need a draconian system to try to deal with this—because that is not what this debate is about. It is a caricature of the Government’s position and of those of us who oppose what the Government are doing.

We are saying that many of the policies being put forward by this Government to deal with the problem as they see it simply will not work. They go too far sometimes and compromise some of the principles every Member of this House would agree on. That is the clash. At some point we will have a debate about this, although perhaps there are other groups of amendments where it is more appropriate. I say again, there will have to be debate between those who—to be fair to the noble Lord, Lord Green—think they represent public opinion on this, and people like me who think he has got it wrong.

As part of the middle-class liberal intelligentsia—maybe not the intelligentsia, but the elite—let me say that I very much support that. Let me say why. As we stand here now, debating this, there are tens of thousands of asylum seekers who have applied for asylum in this country who have been waiting for a decision for more than a year. There are so many statistics sometimes you drown in them and are not sure which are actually right, so I will quote the Joint Committee on Human Rights, as it is slightly different to my own statistics. It says:

“approximately 65% of asylum applicants awaiting initial decisions had been waiting more than six months and that the average time to make an initial decision is now more than a year”.

That means tens of thousands of asylum seekers are waiting to have their application determined.

It would be interesting to hear from the Minister about the Home Office’s assessment of how long this is. Are there thousands of people waiting two years? When I was a Member of Parliament, people would sometimes come to me whose asylum claim had been neither agreed nor disagreed. They had actually disappeared and were there, and had been there for years and years. Now nobody wants that system. It’s ridiculous; of course nobody wants a situation that works like that. The reason I labour this point is that it goes back to the debates on the last group. The key to this issue is speeding up the process. We cannot have a situation where people are languishing for months and years before a decision is made. To be fair, the Minister believes that what the Government are proposing will speed up the process. I hope that they are right, but I do not think that they are. This is what bedevils the asylum system; it is not fair to the country, the public or the asylum applicants themselves. That is the basis of it.

Then you are left with the question of how you deal with this problem and what you do about it. At the moment, the Government’s position is that you have to wait a year before you can apply to work and then, if you do, you can work in specific occupations and jobs. I go back to the point made by my noble friend Lady Chakrabarti—supported I think by the noble Lord, Lord Bethell. The problem then becomes the denial of the opportunity for asylum seekers to work unless they have been here for a year. The community cohesion impact of that is enormous. What happens is that people then look at it and say, “What are they doing?” Noble Lords know the things that people say. “They’re not working. They’re not doing anything. They’re living on benefits. It’s about time they got out and did something”. Yet that is exactly what they want to do. Then some of them go out and work illegally, and they undercut the wages of legal workers or are employed in various occupations that we know about. So the whole system is undermined. To be fair, the last Labour Government did it. We introduced it, actually. I say to the Minister that, working in the Home Office, if she ever comes to this side, she will find quoted back to her things that she agreed to. So I accept that, right at the beginning of 2002, I think, we introduced this legislation for the same reason: we were worried about it being a pull factor.

But, if you look at it, where is the evidence? It clearly has not been, because it has not stopped asylum taking place—in fact, it has gone up. I will be fair and honest about it. My noble friend Lord Blunkett has done it once or twice in here, to his credit. Sometimes you introduce a policy with the best intentions—but what do you do if it does not work? Carry on? Do you just blindly say, “Well, it hasn’t worked but we’re going to carry on with it”? In supporting these amendments, we are saying to the Government that we have a policy that undermines community cohesion and does not work.

We then have the ludicrous situation where we have a Statement made by the Minister in the other place where he will not even publish the evidence for why the Government will continue with the current policy. He just refuses to publish it. So the Home Office has a review and does not publish the evidence. Then its own advisory committee says, “You’re wrong—you should do, and the policy is wrong anyway”. So the Government then turn around and say, “That’s ridiculous. We don’t agree with you”. They do not say why—other than that it is the pull factor. But then they do not publish the evidence that says that it is the pull factor.

It is not only that. I looked to see whether there was anybody else and found out that the Independent Anti-slavery Commissioner said:

“As the Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner, I am aware of the harm caused to survivors of modern slavery and human trafficking unable to access training and work opportunities while they face delays in asylum status decisions.”


So the Independent Anti-slavery Commissioner is wrong as well.

So, to answer this, I say that the Minister does not want to penalise asylum seekers, but this is ridiculous. We have public policy that is not working and is undermining community cohesion and a government response that simply says, “We don’t agree with all the people who disagree with us but we’re not going to tell you what the evidence is to support that, because it’s the pull factor”—

[Lord Green of Deddington (CB)]

I am a bit puzzled. Although the precise numbers vary from year to year, it is quite clear that substantial numbers—30%, 40% or 50%, depending on which year you take—turn out not to have a case for asylum in this country. Surely that should be a factor. Surely the way forward is, as the noble Lord proposed when he first spoke, to speed this situation up so that we can get the answers within the six months, which would be much better for everybody. Surely that should be the centre of their policy.

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

Can I intervene on an intervention? What is wrong if those people are allowed to work? If it is then determined that they have no right to stay, they would then have to leave—but, in the meantime, they are supporting themselves, perhaps using their skills and contributing tax. If they are then found not to have a legal claim to stay, so be it. I cannot see what the harm is in the meantime.

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

I say to the noble Lord, Lord Green, that, at the end of the day, of course you want to speed the system up. No one does not want to speed up the asylum application process—to say that would be ridiculous, because of course everyone does. What I am saying is that, as the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, has just said, at the same time, for the purposes of community cohesion and all the other things that we have heard, allowing asylum seekers to work while their application is being processed is actually a sensible thing to do. But the Government will not publish the evidence for why that is a pull factor, when the policy has been in place since 2001 or 2002 or whatever and has not made any significant difference at all. So all sorts of people and organisations support the right to work, which seems a sensible and reasonable thing to do.

I will finish by saying one simple policy to the Minister. I like to see people off benefits; I do not want to see people languishing on benefits. I thought that was a Conservative Government policy. One of the ways of doing that is allowing people to work: it aids community cohesion and is good for the individuals concerned. I simply do not understand why the Government are turning their face against what is a sensible policy initiative that would do a lot for community cohesion.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

My Lords, I again thank noble Lords who have spoken on these two amendments. The fact that there were only two amendments in this group did not make the debate any less fulsome.

I will say at the outset that the conclusion on right to work was made primarily on the grounds not of the pull factor but of the integrity of the labour market, and an impact assessment will be published on this in due course. But the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, is absolutely right that the policy has been in place since 2002. He says that things have not changed in that time in terms of people still wanting to come to this country, but I think that the global situation to draw people to this country probably has changed since 2002. I do not say that in a mischievous way at all—the world has changed and, therefore, people are more likely to want to come to this country, particularly when the economy is so good.

The noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, and the noble Lord, Lord Green of Deddington, talked about polls, but I will not go into the merits and demerits of them: they are what they are and, as the noble Lord, Lord Green, said, it depends on the question that you ask. But the biggest poll that we have had in recent years was of course the 2019 general election, and that point about taking back control of our borders was at the heart of it.

Our current policy allows asylum seekers to work in the UK if their claim has been outstanding for 12 months, through no fault of their own. However, as the noble Lords, Lord Green and Lord Alton, were absolutely right to say, the best way to deal with people’s claims being outstanding for 12 months is to speed the process up in its entirety.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

The noble Baroness is absolutely right, except that those who interject constantly with tiny, mean little points also ought to respect the House and perhaps be courteous to everybody else. It goes both ways.

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

Coming from where I have, it seems incredibly courteous to me. We have Ministers who try to answer questions, which is refreshing. However, I take the point—the noble Baroness is absolutely right in what she said.

This is an important little amendment, which I support, in the names of the noble Baronesses, Lady Lister, Lady Hamwee and Lady Jones. It is not a party-political or ideological issue but a question of administration and removing a totally avoidable obstacle for people granted asylum in the UK. The British Red Cross is campaigning for it. The 28-day move-on period is simply not long enough to put basic arrangements in place. It leaves people facing avoidable poverty, and we should be able to do better. I remind the Committee that we are talking about people who have been granted asylum, not those waiting for their decision.

I believe we can go on a couple of minutes past 3.30 pm, but I will not detain the Committee for very long. The Minister, Tom Pursglove MP, gave a couple of answers in the other place that I did not quite understand. He did not disagree that there was a problem, saying:

“We are aware of reports that some refugees do not access universal credit or other benefits, or adequate housing, within 28 days.”


He went on to say that extending the period to 56 days, as the amendment suggests, would not fix the problem but he did not say why. He said there was a problem, but that extending the period would not do anything about it. Can the Minister elaborate on why the Government believe there is a problem but that extending the time limit would not make any difference? He also gave no response to the points raised on cost savings to local authorities and the benefits to the public purse of extending the time limit, lessening homelessness and the use of temporary accommodation. He gave no answer to any of those questions.

Finally, Mr Pursglove said that

“we must also consider the strong countervailing factors that make increasing that period difficult”—[Official Report, Commons, Nationality and Borders Bill Committee, 4/11/21; cols. 666-67.]

but he did not say what they were. He just stated it. Knowing our Minister as I do, and knowing that she does try to answer questions, I say that it is not really acceptable to make a statement as a point of fact without some evidence to support it. The Minister in the other place accepted that there was a problem with 28 days but did not say why extending it would not solve this. He just said, “Yes, there is a problem”, almost as a shrug of the shoulders. This important little amendment seeks to help those who have been granted asylum deal with their transition into the life we all want them to have.