UK Asylum and Refugee Policy

Baroness Hamwee Excerpts

Friday 9th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, has been valuable to this country. I should say that I chair the House’s Justice and Home Affairs Select Committee although I will speak for myself, not the committee, today; however, I am of course informed by the committee’s current work on family migration.

Families and migration are significant not only to people who are struggling—it can be a great struggle to be with family now—but to those of us who owe our presence in the UK to our family’s decision to come here, as the noble Baroness, Lady Twycross, reminded us. As recently as the previous generation, many are in high places now—and a good thing, too. That is in my mind when I hear about the increasingly exclusionary and unworkable policies. I hear them as rhetoric, not reason, when it is leadership and the calming of suspicions that are needed.

The first time I stood for election, more than 40 years ago, someone said to me, “Where will my grandchildren live?” This is not a new issue. However, the provision of housing, education and a range of other services for the settled community should not be a matter for competition with newcomers. Both groups need them. The House is grateful to the most reverend Primate for articulating what some of us struggle to express.

The Home Secretary is reported as saying that we need a Bill of responsibilities, as distinct from a Bill of Rights. Are both not important? I would hope that that includes a responsibility towards, for instance, employees of the British Council and their families who are stuck in Afghanistan, whose plight I do not need to describe, and those who have provided security for our diplomats—there are lots of examples that one could give. Can the Minister say something about the number of people who have actually been assisted under the ACRS and ARAP? Also, how many are eligible for those schemes but have not been able to take advantage of them?

There is a sort of contract between those whom the UK welcomes and this country, although “welcome” is not the right word given how much of the process is working. Perhaps it is the company I keep, but I have never met an asylum seeker or refugee who is not grateful, keen to contribute to our society and frustrated by the rules that preclude it. Of course, the irony is that the skills, talents and characteristics that many refugees bring are needed here. Would I have had the gumption to get up and go, or would I have put my head in the sand? There are particular character traits involved alongside the external imperative; these are traits that we know employers welcome and are needed.

Slavery and trafficking are not unrelated to asylum seeking. Yesterday, I heard conscription in Eritrea be described as “state slavery”. Not every slavery claim is false. Are the Government retreating from their work on modern slavery? What should we read into the delay in appointing a new Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner? Is every Albanian to be disbelieved? Who can be surprised that Albanian children are going missing? It is a well-known pattern because traffickers and abusers are trusted by victims more than they trust the UK authorities. I understand that 88% of Albanian women have succeeded in their asylum claims; that figure is not an outlier.

The noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, referred to the Centre for Policy Studies’ publication of this week, endorsed by the Home Secretary. The centre’s website page on the publication refers to the views of Conservative switchers who voted Conservative in 2019 but have since drifted away; they seem to be the audience. Importantly, we must distinguish asylum seekers and refugees from immigrants who come here for various reasons and make up the greater number by far.

Years ago, I heard the term “detained fast track”. I thought that it was benign, fast-track acceptance. In 2015, the system was declared unlawful by Lord Dyson in the Court of Appeal, primarily because

“the time limits are so tight as to make it impossible for there to be a fair hearing of appeals in a significant number of cases.”

Are we heading for “seek asylum” detention, fast-tracked away without assessment? The new tier system means no assessment at all.

The Government seem to focus on excluding asylum seekers. What we do not hear about is the effort that is going into dealing with the criminal smugglers, as distinct from revictimising their victims. The criminals are able to tweak their business model or move it to say, Rwanda, if they are not prosecuted and penalised.

Today’s Motion refers to “forced migration”. Climate change is forcing it, with migrants displaced far and wide within their own regions. People will take avoiding action—that is not economic migration—and will be planning ahead. So should the UK, and with compassion, confidence and practical common sense. We are left with this question: in the context of the current and anticipated international situation, what do the Government regard as the UK’s fair share?

I wish that we had longer for this debate.