Asylum Support (Amendment No. 3) Regulations 2015

Baroness Lister of Burtersett Excerpts

Tuesday 27th October 2015 Lords Chamber

All too often for these desperate families it is a case of no money, no house, no permission to work. In the 21st century, in the fourth-richest country on earth, people are being reduced to absolute destitution, not by accident or personal tragedy but by deliberate act of policy—and we should therefore certainly reconsider these regulations today by supporting the Motion in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, I support the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, and my noble friend Lord Rosser. I apologise if I cover some of the same ground. I am particularly grateful to the noble Baroness for having moved so quickly to ensure that we were able to debate these regulations. I believe that your Lordships should oppose them on two main grounds: the manner in which they were introduced and the impact that a cut of £16 a week in the allowance for each child will have on a particularly vulnerable group of children and families, as is spelled out in the regret Motion.

As we have already heard, these regulations replicate regulations that were originally laid on 12 March, just a fortnight before the end of the last parliamentary Session. To my knowledge, no Statement, oral or written, was made to Parliament that the regulations had been made, despite the significant change in asylum support policy they represent and despite the considerable interest in that policy that had been expressed, particularly in your Lordships’ House. As I understand it, the stakeholder forum of voluntary organisations working with asylum seekers was informed on 23 March, just two weeks before the regulations were due to come into force. I learned of the regulations the following day by pure chance. No other parliamentarian whom I contacted, Front Bench or Back Bench, knew anything about them. It is thanks only to the behind-the-scenes intervention of the former MP Sarah Teather, who was a great parliamentary champion of asylum seekers, that they were withdrawn as they had not been agreed by the coalition partners.

It was shoddy behaviour on the part of the Home Office to sneak out controversial regulations in this way at a time when Parliament could do nothing about them. I do not address this criticism to the Minister, because I am quite sure that he personally would not have countenanced such behaviour. However, I hope that he will relay to the Home Office our dismay at it.

Although the official reason given for the withdrawal of the original regulations was “further reflection”, the suspicion was that they would be relaid in the new Parliament, so I tabled a Written Question to ask whether the Government planned to do so. The response on 8 June was that:

“The matter is under consideration”.

Five weeks later, identical regulations were laid just a week before the House rose for the Summer Recess. Therefore, once again there was no time for them to be debated before they came into effect in August. It is difficult not to conclude that this was deliberate.

Not surprisingly, the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, as has already been referred to, was pretty scathing. It found “unconvincing” the explanation given for an instrument containing such a “controversial policy change” being laid “so close to a recess”. It expressed its disappointment that,

“gaining an understanding of the … background”,

to the policy change required such,

“persistent questioning of the Government”.

One aspect of the background to the policy change that was not addressed is the consistent picture painted by organisations working with asylum-seeking families of the severe poverty and hardship they have experienced living on the existing allowances. As we have already heard, these were set in 1999 at 70% of income support rates. However, since 2011, they have been frozen, resulting in a cut of nearly 7.5% in their real value.

Income support rates are far from generous. A study of the cost of a child for the Child Poverty Action Group by Loughborough University’s Centre for Research in Social Policy—I declare a double interest as the honorary president of the CPAG and emeritus professor at Loughborough—concluded that,

“a family on benefits is left well over a third short of being able to afford a socially acceptable minimum”.

Back in 2010, before the rates were frozen, Still Human Still Here analysed the basket of basic goods used by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation for its minimum income standard research but stripped it down to include only goods needed to avoid what it termed “absolute poverty”. It concluded that 70% of income support was the absolute minimum necessary to meet asylum seekers’ basic needs.

We have already heard about the research conducted by Refugee Action. Respondents to that research expressed deep concern about the impact that deprivation was having on the health, well-being and physical development of their children. The point was made that, whereas income support recipients might be able to turn to family or social networks for help in getting by, this was rarely an option for asylum seekers. Overall, its conclusion was that the support system,

“fails to meet essential living needs or ensure a dignified standard of living for those in its care”.

In 2013, I sat on an all-party parliamentary inquiry into asylum support for children and young people, chaired by Sarah Teather and supported by the Children’s Society. We were shocked by some of the evidence received of the hardship faced by asylum-seeking families. We took evidence from a range of experts, social workers, local authorities and families themselves and concluded that the current levels of support provided to families are too low to meet children’s essential needs. Furthermore, these rates do not enable parents to provide for their children’s wider needs to learn, grow and develop, especially if they have a disability.

It is difficult to square all this evidence with the Home Office’s conclusion that the previous levels of asylum support for families with children,

“significantly exceed what is necessary to meet essential living needs”.

This conclusion is based primarily on ONS expenditure data for the lowest 10% income group, supplemented by various other data on the cost of essential items. But taking expenditure data for the lowest decile begs the question as to whether people at that level of income are able to spend enough for a healthy and decent life—a point made by the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee. We know that many of those living on a lower income are not able to afford an adequate diet. It therefore does not provide an appropriate benchmark for costing a healthy diet. Also, I am not convinced that the adjustments made to the ONS data take adequate account of the extra costs involved for people new to the country, often living in poor accommodation.

The advice that I have received from Donald Hirsch, whose evidence was cited in the 2014 High Court judgment on asylum support, and from Professor Jonathan Bradshaw, both respected experts who work on minimum income standards and the costs of children, is that it is not good enough to rely on multiple strands of evidence to corroborate the questionable figures taken from the ONS data, when each of the strands is, in their words, “flimsy and selectively chosen”. They focus in particular on the evidence used to argue that the food budget is adequate, pointing out that it provides little more than half of what has been calculated is required to achieve a minimum income standard deemed necessary for decent living by the general public. That is in the context of greater access to kitchen facilities and transport than is likely to be the case for asylum seekers on the Government’s assumptions.

One piece of evidence is misrepresented hearsay taken from quotes from a nutritionist. Another is based on the spending habits of a member of the Home Office team. The example for one day is: “breakfast: cereal; lunch: garlic baguette; dinner: pasta with peppers”. That does not sound like a very healthy diet for a growing child. Would it not have been more appropriate, when determining the level of support for a particularly vulnerable and sometimes traumatised group of families for whom, as we have heard, paid work is not a committed option, for the Home Office to have employed a nutritionist and to have made a proper scientific costing of a weekly menu, as done by proper academic research in this area?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Bates]

Our position is that we have gone into this in exhaustive detail, as my letter to the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, set out, probably in too much detail. It set out right down to the last penny where we felt that these amounts had come from. We clearly believe that we are complying with our international obligations. If this is shown to have a real detrimental effect, and evidence can be provided to us, then of course we will consider that very carefully next year, when this comes to be reviewed.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett]

It should not be up to other organisations to provide the evidence. The Minister very honestly said at the outset that these people will be living on an income barely above the level of destitution. I asked if he would give an undertaking that the Home Office would monitor the impact. Will he now do that please?

[Lord Bates]

We will, of course, continue to monitor the impact. We will continue to work through the National Asylum Stakeholder Forum with other groups. We have set out our position, and if people challenge that position and have data that show that there is unintended hardship as a result of these regulations, they should come forward with them. They should make the data available to us, and we will then consider them.