UK Asylum and Refugee Policy

Lord McInnes of Kilwinning Excerpts

Friday 9th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord McInnes of Kilwinning (Con)]

My Lords, I begin by declaring my interest as a member of your Lordships’ Justice and Home Affairs Committee. I thank the most reverend Primate who once again brings before us today a subject that allows us to rise above the topicality of daily politics and properly focus on and think about an important policy area.

Six years ago, I made my maiden speech in your Lordships’ House in another of the most reverend Primate’s debates, that time on British values. In his opening remarks he said:

“In short, we need a more beautiful and better common narrative that shapes and inspires us with a common purpose, a vaulting national ambition, not a sense of division and antagonism both domestically and internationally. We need a narrative that speaks to the world of bright hope and not mere optimism, let alone simple self-interest.”—[Official Report, 2/12/16; col. 418.]


In the area of migration, it seems that we have reached a place wherein lots of competing values and aspirations are clashing and failing to provide the necessary framework that can command consensus and that common purpose that the most reverend Primate so eloquently described in that debate.

Only last week we witnessed outrage in many quarters about the number of migrants who have entered the UK this year, forgetting the enormous public support there was, quite rightly, for the Afghan, Ukrainian and Hong Kong humanitarian resettlement schemes. However, with figures of net migration juxtaposed and conflated with images of small boats, it is the case that, as my noble friend Lady Stowell referred to, a poll earlier this week showed that only 9% of people think current immigration in the UK is just right.

All too often the debate seems characterised in a way that consensus and a settled position may never be reached. I have yet to meet anyone—the most reverend Primate referred to this—who does not think there should be controlled migration. Of course government policy should be considered, and will always be challenged in your Lordships’ House, but if the Government can be expected to control migration and thereafter allow more humanitarian channels, they will have to act to defeat the evil of people smuggling. I am glad to say that it is a priority of the Prime Minister.

In this regard, I tend to agree with the Policy Exchange paper, which noble Lords have referred to, on controlled immigration, published last month. We must be realistic that the extra humanitarian routes many of us want will gain popular and then political consent only when the small boats issue and evil gangs have been confronted.

Consensus on migration issues requires leadership. If there are three principal buckets of migration that the UK wishes to fulfil—humanitarian, economic and educational—each must be properly defined and promoted to the people of this country. In each of these areas, a consensus of support can be built. It has been done before. However, it will require significant improvements in the systems deployed to control immigration, as well as assurance that the UK is proactively seeking to improve its humanitarian and asylum offer. Humanitarian needs will only increase. The UNHCR has identified that 1.5 million more people will require asylum or resettlement in the coming year.

Undoubtedly, something that leads to a lack of public consensus is the very slow processing rate of asylum claims by the Home Office, which a number of noble Lords have referred to. I hope that my noble friend the Minister can reassure your Lordships that there will be the kind of human and creative investment in a Home Office system to ensure that asylum claimants are given as quick a decision as possible. The tiny numbers of asylum decisions at present cause only further distress for those escaping horrific tragedy, but mean that others see the UK as a place where a very slow process will allow leave to remain for a long period.

As well as being efficient, such a system must be humanitarian. I believe that the United Kingdom has a proud history of humanitarian action, but almost always at a point where it is just a little too late, as referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti. We must move away from a situation where legal resettlement schemes are reliant on media reports to gain public traction, in turn to ensure political support for legal resettlement. We have one of the best diplomatic networks in the world. Surely we should have proactive resettlement plans that do not require horrific humanitarian circumstances before we allow a regular legal route to the UK.

Yes, we will disagree on the numbers, but the current schemes do not allow an organic ability to react to humanitarian crises from outside of specific countries. Can my noble friend the Minister outline what work His Majesty’s Government are doing with UNHCR to identify regular resettlement routes from areas of the world such as sub-Saharan Africa? Unless we allow such a mechanism, can we be surprised about the large numbers who end up on the north coast of Africa and then onwards to the channel?

With deep regret, I conclude that we currently do not have the clear consensus and values-based migration strategy that we would want, and which would then shape policy. This is the worst of all worlds. I hope that my noble friend the Minister can reassure us that this new Conservative Administration are determined to provide the leadership that the country needs in managing migration, while offering the humanitarian leadership that we all desire.

Asylum System

Lord McInnes of Kilwinning Excerpts

Monday 28th September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

My Lords, the right reverend Prelate, absolutely rightly, points to the work that local authorities are doing and we are most grateful to them; 80 local authorities have pledged more than 330 places to support our national transfer scheme. But he is also right to point out that in parallel with requests for more local authorities to support the NTS, we have launched a consultation on a more sustainable long-term model for the NTS.

[Lord McInnes of Kilwinning (Con) [V]]

My Lords, given that my noble friend has committed to the importance of resettlement as the best means of avoiding dangerous routes and people trafficking of asylum seekers, will she commit once again to investigate the expansion, post Covid, of person-to-person interviews in refugee camps, especially in Jordan and Lebanon, as opposed to virtual interviews?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

In an ideal world, we would have been doing face-to-face interviews, but for the simpler cases, if you like, virtual interviews have been more efficient. That is not right in every case, but clearly, we should make the most of our digital capabilities where it is appropriate.

Refugees

Lord McInnes of Kilwinning Excerpts

Wednesday 19th July 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord McInnes of Kilwinning (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the right reverend Prelate for bringing this report before the House. It is a positive sign that my noble friend the Minister of State is replying to the debate. Most of all, I thank the authors of the report, who have opened my eyes and shone a light on what happens to successful asylum seekers in the UK.

In the UK there was quite rightly a public outcry on behalf of refugees after the tragic death of the child refugee Alan Kurdi. These deaths are unfortunately all too common. As happens in Britain, the Government listened, reacted and committed to accepting 20,000 Syrian refugees in the lifetime of the Parliament. That is a very significant number, given the total number of asylum seekers is normally around 40,000 per year.

This report is timely because it has identified a two-tier system that has been caused because of the creation of a best practice—as we have heard from the right reverend Prelate—that a government focus on the resettlement programmes, especially the Syrian vulnerable people resettlement programme, has brought about. This two-tier system has now been recognised in both the APPG report and the report of the Home Affairs Committee in the other place published in January this year. The Government should be congratulated on their continuing commitment to the resettlement programme, working closely with local authorities across the UK. However, this excellent report from the APPG raises the plight of the four-fifths of refugees seeking asylum in the UK who are not part of the resettlement scheme and whose only choice is to seek asylum once they arrive in the UK. One of the great ironies of that is that 10% of all those seeking asylum are Syrians. That underlines the two-tier process that we have that some people of the same nationality can have two very different experiences.

As we have heard, the report correctly identifies the crucial moving-on period—the point at which the clock starts ticking for the successful applicant with 28 days left in Home Office accommodation and before Home Office financial support comes to an end. That is the period in which a successful asylum applicant has to find accommodation, find a job, seek benefits or enter education. It is clear from the APPG report that too much is currently left to chance. The timing of the arrival of the assigned national insurance number, the biometric residence permit and the letter informing the asylum seeker that they have been successful do not appear to be co-ordinated. In the report, there is an example of a successful asylum seeker who received notice to quit his Home Office accommodation but then did not receive notice that he had been successful in his appeal for asylum for a further fortnight. What should be a moment of vindication and hope for the successful asylum applicant becomes one of confusion and, for some, apparent freefall in the system.

I would be grateful to hear from my noble friend the Minister how the Home Office can further co-ordinate this moving-on period with other departments and local authorities to ensure a seamless move from Home Office accommodation. It is difficult to envisage how this could happen without a dedicated resource to support these vulnerable people and ensure that there is cross-departmental access for such a team. The best practice used for the resettlement programmes has surely provided an opportunity for the expertise gained within the Home Office to be deployed.

The Government have trialled successfully the community sponsorship scheme from Canada, and I would hope that they would also look to other international examples of where refugees have been successfully integrated and been able to fulfil their education and make an active economic contribution to their new state. We cannot allow vulnerable refugees to fall through the net and end up homeless in abject poverty, therefore creating significant and, importantly, more expensive responsibilities for the state further down the line.

The Home Office has demonstrated the ability of central government to work closely with local authorities to ensure that vulnerable people are properly cared for in this country. The report we have from the APPG points in several important ways to how we can ensure that those same vulnerable people receive sustained support, co-ordination and management.