Baroness Hamwee
Main Page: Baroness Hamwee (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Baroness Hamwee (LD)
My Lords, what I have to say is not original but I do not think that means it is not worth saying. Just because it is not original does not mean that it is trite. However, what is not trite is my welcome to the Minister. This may not be the last time we debate this issue.
It has been anticipated but I am going to say it: I doubt any of us can truly understand what it must be like to seek asylum, or even to be driven to seek to be allowed to live in another country without the reasons which would back up an asylum claim but simply out of concern for one’s own family and to make a reasonable living. The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, has referred to the baggage around the term “economic migrant”. On the one hand it is vagrancy and laziness; on the other, it suggests a degree of greater affluence than is generally the case. Again this point has been anticipated, but I cannot imagine what it would be like not to be allowed to work; it would dominate my sense of self-worth and my well-being. However, those issues would not dominate if I were trying to live on £5.23 per day—I could not do it for a week, let alone six months— and I have what Mr Justice Popplewell in the recent judicial review called a “significant wardrobe”. I am not someone who, as he described it, arrives,
“with no more than the clothes they stand up in so that the asylum support has to provide for an initial stock of sufficient clothing and footwear for the English climate”.
That is apart from food, healthcare, personal care and so on.
It is clearly common ground that the amount provided is considerably less than income support, the minimum wage or the London living wage. The word “living” is in there for a reason. The London Assembly is one of the organisations—political and non-political, secular and non-secular—which has supported the proposition put forward by my noble friend, and one might expect that in London this would have the most impact.
Like the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, I have not seen anything to support the assertion that we deter economic migration. As has been said, this is not a view shared by many other European countries with shorter periods of restriction.
Recent news reports—and not only recent reports—have indeed talked about people dicing with death, but they have diced with death to get across the Mediterranean to Lampedusa, mainland Italy or Greece. I do not recognise the description given by my noble friend Lord Attlee. This view of immigrants is applied to asylum seekers by people who do not distinguish between migration and asylum-seeking. I do not charge my noble friend with that—we have had this conversation on the Floor of the Chamber and I know that he makes the distinction—but there are people who say of the two populations that they come only for the benefits.
If an asylum seeker is keen to contribute to society and has not been fast-tracked out within the six months, as I suspect many economic migrants would be, and is seen to be keen, that might be something of an answer to that mindset or, frankly, that prejudice. However, from what I have seen, the policy proposed by my noble friend has public support. We are all very aware of the need to do anything that can assist integration and community cohesion. Not permitting work has a danger of producing the converse, of making very vulnerable people even more vulnerable to exploitation and driving them underground into the black economy. It would help, too, to ease the transition for those who are given status—and there are quite a lot—when their claims succeed.
Of course, a lot can be said about the importance of work for physical and mental health, for keeping up one’s skills—life skills, social skills and skills in handling relationships—and for keeping up one’s confidence and being able to show a prospective employer that one has been employed.
The point was made—I do not know by whom—that many asylum seekers are self-employed. That does not surprise me. If you have the get up and go to face getting up and going, you will probably have something of an entrepreneurial spirit. I do not need to spell out the impact of poverty on dependants, including children, and on their development and learning when combined with being uprooted from one’s original country and culture. I was struck by what Z, a torture survivor said—I think in the recent case but certainly in the report of the case—that,
“for me when you are poor there is no life for you. It is a kind of prison. It is worse than prison.
The Still Human Still Here consortium urges a geographical pilot covering at least two regions—of course, asylum seekers have no choice about where they are dispersed to—for a year to allow for assessment of whether allowing this group to work does indeed lead to an increase in unfounded applications, or whether it helps integration and provides value for money, taking into account administrative costs but also savings from not having to pay for support. I urge the Government to engage with the NGOs and the various organisations which, struggling on very little money themselves, are doing very good work, not just with direct support but in drawing attention to the issues.
I can think of little so demeaning as being prevented from working. Frankly, six months without work seems an unattractive proposition. We demean ourselves as a country with this restriction—perhaps “exclusion” would be the better word.
I know the views of my noble friend Lord Attlee about free movement in the EU. He took me by surprise once when he answered a Question from me very sympathetically on this. He now argues that such a change in policy would prejudice those who are not bogus asylum seekers. I continue to have the view that they are bogus only because that is how we label them. Our systems—this is very much the point of the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham—need to be good enough to identify asylum seekers with well-founded claims without unreasonable delay. They should not cause problems which in themselves penalise asylum seekers.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
I do not have those figures before me but I will certainly provide them to the noble Lord. However, given that 11 minutes have passed, I conclude by thanking all noble Lords who have taken part in the debate.
Baroness Hamwee
Before my noble friend sits down, as we are well within the hour, she mentioned the decision being announced on 9 August, following the review. I accept her point that this is about the methodology, not the amount. If she cannot do so now, and she may not be able to, will she let us know fairly soon when the announcement, which will be made on a Saturday, will take effect if there is to be a new rate? Is there any possibility of the announcement being made while Parliament is still sitting so that we might have an opportunity, possibly as the least important people involved in this, to debate and air the issues that will arise from the decision?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
I thank my noble friend for making that point. Of course, 9 August will fall during the Summer Recess. I will ask for the measure to be debated in this House.